PUBPAT Makes Progress Against JPEG Patent

The Data Compression News Blog writes "The US Patent Office has granted the Public Patent Foundation's request for a reexamination of the patent which Forgent Networks is reportedly using to harass anyone that implements the widely used JPEG format. They have already been challenged by many, but PUBPAT had the first concrete case with 'prior art'. In its Order granting PUBPAT's request, the Patent Office found that PUBPAT raised 'a substantial new question of patentability' regarding every claim of the the '672 Patent."

Comments

Knowledge of patent encumberance.

[jbn-o]

Neither of the commenters to date take your question seriously, so I'll make a guess: at the time software was developed to encode and decode JPEG, it was not common knowledge that JPEGs were ostensibly patent-encumbered. As far as I know, no unencumbered alternative to JPEG was developed. But it is widely understood among those who deal with these matters that MP3 is patent-encumbered and that we should use and encourage others to use the apparently unencumbered (and higher quality, besides) Ogg Vorbis instead.

Re:Could they be sued? succesfully?

[darkmeridian]

It's in the contract. Parties license patents to avoid litigation. They know the patent may be invalid, but it's easier to settle sometimes rather than die trying. They waive their right to recoup the licensing costs if the patents are later invalidated. Exceptions exist if there was inequitable conduct (basically fraud) before the PTO while obtaining the patents. then all bets are off.