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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."
The problem seems to arise when a patent is sold. It seems like the patent rules should be changed so that patent infringement can only apply when the original party filing the patent has been harmed. It makes sense to protect the inventor - that's what patents are for. The problem seems to arise when the party who is claiming infringement is not using the patent to generate revenue (excluding law suits). It seems like there should be a "minimum reasonable usage" clause in the patent law. By "minimum reasonable usage" means - you as a patent holder are using the patent in your livelihood or the corporations livelihood.
This is dumb, and some would argue anti-competetive monopolistic behaviour. You have a patent on something cool. You let people use it without any royalties; it becomes popular. Really popular. Then, all of a sudden, you start charging royalties, and everyone is trapped. It would not have become that popular if royalties had been there in the first place.
This is reminiscent of two things: Microsoft (slightly different modus operandi), and drug dealers (the first one's free kiddies).
Should be that if you don't enforce your patent within a reasonable time frame, you lose the right to do so. In a perfect world. Which we are far, far, away from.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
The problem is most good image codecs are a patent mindfield [e.g. wavelets]. You can still do things like 5/9 [or whatever] and then typical entropy encoding. I think ... not 100% on top of the graphics scene.
Though a simple Haar wavelet can be effective [and with a tweak lossless].
Actually you can perform bincoding and/or lifting to most domain transforms [e.g. DCT] and wavelet based codecs to get a transform that works with integers only and can be lossless. The "bindct" papers of a few years ago are a good example. They showed how to do DCT type IV [i think, whatever JPEG uses] using only integer transforms [shifts,adds,subs] that got coding gains close to the traditional DCT.
For raster images PNG is as good as it gets at the moment. You could do a block sorting codec to get a slight better compression ratio but not by much [and it wouldn't be good for progressive images].
As for truecolour images there really isn't much unfortunately.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
FWIW, Adobe's PDF includes embedded images using DCT or discrete cosine transform for compression. If you extract the image sections from the document, you end up with a JPEG file.
Um, you do realize that the patent was filed in October 1986 and granted in October 1987, don't you?
David Huffmann developed Huffmann coding in 1952.
I actually don't see what the big deal is anyway. The patent term is set to expire soon - October 2006 if they filed under the current system.
That still doesn't make it less wrong. They already have extorted people out of their money with this patent, and they still have 11 months to do so.
OK, since first day I saw jpeg 2000, I am confused.
It produces images with no glitches and excellent space needs.
When I asked why people don't use it instead of jpeg, I was answered "It has patent issues". After switching to OS X, I noticed jpeg2000 is supported in the OS frameworks itself.
Now JPEG has some patent issues too, why people don't use jpeg 2000 to make jpeg obsolete?
PNG BETTER for high-traffic? yeah right (the short version). if you are high-traffic that means lots of images downloaded - that means lots of bandwidth. you want to reduce bandwidth - thus reduce image file sizes (or reduce the size and/or number of images on a site). jpeg uses lossy compression that means it will LOSe image content/data in return for compression. in most cases if the image is "realistic" (a photo) and not purely hand-drawn, jpeg produces much smaller file sizes at mostly indistinguishable quality (given a good quality setting) for most people, or acceptible degredation in return for MASSIVE savings in file size. in fact it can be 1/5th the size or even 1/10th the size of the same PNG for the same content and visually be "as good". with jpeg you do not get an alpha channel so it's not useful for cases where you want that, and it's also not useful if the quality loss is not acceptable - but in ALL other cases, jpeg will get you much reduced bandwidth requirements compared to png - the vast majority of the time. i suggest doing some reading up on image compression techniques and image file codecs.
--------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------------
Take a look at the real patent system,
When you take someone to court with a patent that will not hold up, not only is there patent tossed out, but there are penalties. The other party will also counter sue and make the holder of the bogus patent pay dearly.
I remember reading somewhere it's like 5x damages and expenses or something like that written into the law, just to make it risky to actually take people to court frivolously.
But what you miss is many lawyers are playing poker and not law.
By this I mean they will intimidate people into paying just so they can avoid a fight, but in practice they can't afford a fight any more then the other guy, maybe even more so. Just ignoring them, or counter bluffing probably wouldn't have any repercussions.
But you never know what cards they may be holding.
The problem is the Engineer's mentality. I know because I used to have it, and still do to a point. I have also had many partners with it.
They always play devils advocate, asking what's the worst cast scenario, how can I over engineer to make sure my bridge will not collapse, or my power supply will not burn down someone's house. Overly cautious.
But in law, and business and business law matters, a totally different approach is needed.
It's about Risk management, the risk reward tradeoffs, Poker, social interactions, and BALLS.
Most engineers panic with any legal things, always assume worst case, and constantly keep putting rules and boundaries where there really aren't any. (Thinking in the BOX) and making the box ever smaller.
"Oh is has to be done like this", or "you can't do that", "the law says this or that".
Well The Laws are only 1/3 of the legal story, Case precedence another large part. What did the courts rule in similar cases? How are these cases handled?
But most important are what are the practical reality of a given situations. Can these guys afford to sue, Can you stall the legal actions in the courts for 20 years till the guy keels over dead from old age. Can you even collect if you win?
I have come to find that many of these "business Guys" will blatantly cross a line. It's only the ones that do this as their full time MO for years before it will catch up with them.
In practice, it's like running a red light; it's only illegal if the cop see you. The differnece is police usualy have time, where District Attorneys are overwhelmed and can only go after the top 10% of what's out there, and only when everything is laid out simple even a five year old can what took place.
So if we had a race, the real business guys will cautiously run the lights, where the engineers wait till the light is completely green. The engineers will almost always loose the race.
I recently had a corporation in California. We had a business guy whom we gave a few shares to about two years into our startup, under 25%.
About a year later realizing that most of us in this venture after 3 years were low in cash, he just decided the company was his.
He closed down the office, took all the contracts, papers, and hardware home with him.
He had secretly filed papers with the state listing him as the sole owner and just deleted us like were never there.
GoDaddy even took the Domain and web site from me! (it was in my name)
And started to present my Inventions (patent pending) to Sun, HP and Intel as well as many investors without us!
We talked to the state, they just file corporate shareholder and offer filings, there is no verification or even protection from Fraud. This means in I could just file papers claiming I own Intel! The State would mindlessly file this, no questions asked. It's up to the courts to clean up any problems that my arise.
Of course someone like Intel would send hordes of Lawyers at
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Huffmann coding was not considered patented at the time. The LZW algorithm had patent issues, but I reckoned at the time we could do LZW-compatible coding with a two-pass algorithm: the only unique feature of LZW was the reoptimization of the compression tables as the data was being processed.
There is a 1935 Italian patent on the compression of images, including colour images, for fax using variable length codes for different picture elements. The claims are sufficiently general the invalidate a lot of run-length compression schemes.
That's just what I can remember while writing this. I am not impressed by their patent. There are lots of dud patents in there. It is easy to search the patent database, and become convinced there is a claim. Look at prior art in products and in theliterature, and it is a different story.
Or better yet, make the patent examiner financially liable for wrongfully issued patents. If it's overturned, the restitution costs and penalties come out of his paycheck. That would likely be a stronger threat than jailtime, and would also help reimburse those injured by bad patents.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?