JPEG Patent Challenged

ChocLinux writes "The Public Patent Foundation has filed a request at the US Patent Office to revoke Compression Labs' data compression patent, which it is reportedly using to harrass anyone that implements the JPEG format. 'CLI's aggressive assertion of the '672 patent is causing substantial public harm by threatening this international standard on which the public relies,' says Pubpat in its filing."

Comments

Yeesh! Didn't they learn from Unisys

[fz00]

Who wasted time chasing this while nearly putting themselves out of business. How about focusing on some real products???

DONATE!!

[backslashdot]

Get this patent overturned. It's extremely important to get these ridiculous technology stifling unoriginal patents overturned.

Where the hell is EFF on this? Pubpatents is getting my money this year and I recommend you guys donate there as well if you are into donating to tech freedom.

Re:DONATE!!

[ChaosDiscord]

...and the fact the EFF realizes the company is simply enforcing their rights to the patent under law.

Why would the EFF care that they're "simply enforcing their rights"? A major part of the EFF's work is to fight things that may be technically legal, but are morally bankrupt. In some cases they can be fought in the courts by challenging the legality or interpretation of the law. In this particular case a major public standard is built on this patent. It was believed that there were no costs involved with implementing it; the patent was not known about. A decade went by without anyone complaining that it was infringing. Suddenly the owner can pop up and announce that he can shut down a standard used across the world by just about anyone with a computer? Forgent is hardly "simply" enforcing their rights. They are knowingly attempting to blackmail major industries with a submarine patent. They're scum, they're abusing the law, and it would be appropriate for the EFF to be involved. There are many reasons the EFF might not be involved, including the imminent expiration you mentioned. But skipping this case because Forgent is technically within the letter of the law is not a reason.

Could it be?

[AxsDeny]

Is it possible that if JPEG patents were enforced we would actually persue the use a PNG (a significantly better format). As a web developer, if I could rely on people being able to see all the different derivations of PNG, life and design would be much easier.

Huffman?

[darrenf]

FTFP (FTFPatent):

"A method for processing digital signals, where the digital signals have first values, second values and other values, to reduce the amount of data utilized to represent the digital signals and to form statistically coded signals such that the more frequently occurring values of digital signals are represented by shorter code lengths and the less frequently occurring values of digital signals are represented by longer code lengths,..."

Gee, where have I seen that before?

Re:So what?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Um...did you even read the wikipedia article you referenced?

From your post:
Unlike JPEGs, PNGs can be lossless
And from the article:
PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a lossless bitmap image format.
By saying PNGs can be lossless, you imply they can be lossy as well...which is not what they were designed for.

From your post:
Sure, they tend to be a bit larger than JPEGs, but I figure the gain in quality is often worth it.
And from the article:
Using PNG instead of a high quality JPEG for such images would result in a large increase in filesize (often 5-10 times) with negligible gain in quality.

And finally, from the article:
PNG was not intended to replace the other popular web image format JPEG.

PNG is intended as a replacement for GIF, not JPG.

Hope this clears things up.

Here's what.

[backslashdot]

Here's what. What happens when someone claims rights on PNG too after everyone starts using it? What we have happening here is the patent board is unable to understand prior art and granting patents on obvious and pre-existing technology.

The issue is not this particular patent, but the issue is blocking other corporations and lawyer clusters from trying to gain broadly worded patents that incorporate pre existing technology from obscure sources so they can make money.

No Software Patents

[kahrytan]

This type of stuff only reinforces the need to free software patents and helps the intiatives spearheaded at nosoftwarepatents.com

That never works

[Wesley Felter]

We've seen this before.

When RSA got popular and people realized that it was patented, there was a large effort to switch to DSA. Right about the time that all the pieces of DSA support were in place, the RSA patent expired so people just kept using RSA.

When GIF got popular and people realized that LZW was patented, PNG was created. By the time PNG was actually supported more-or-less correctly in browsers, the LZW patent expired.

I suspect if this JPEG madness keeps up, people will try to switch to JPEG 2000 (which is still patented, but at least the patent holders appear friendly). But it looks like the JPEG patent expires around 2007, which does not leave enough time to switch to anything.

Re:Yeesh! Didn't they learn from Unisys

[Wesley Felter]

Real products are a distraction for these people. Forgent got millions out of various companies without developing anything. Since the legal fees (costs) are much less than the licensing revenue, it's a self-perpetuating system. The RIAA settlements are the same way; each settlement pays for N new lawsuits to be filed and the profit rises exponentially.

Re:If JPGs aren't available...

[typical]

Animated PNGs aren't possible (yet), alas...

Well, it all depends on your definition of what PNG is.

Re:If JPGs aren't available...

[mitherial]

You truncated it and and mispelled it:

"Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." 'Whataever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they are bearing gifts'

Or 'Ein Danaergeschenk' (the Greek Gift) in German.

/noob =D