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

Could they be sued? succesfully?

[robbak]

Question: If a corporation like this recieves licence fees for an invalid patent, What is preventing the licensees suing them for the money that they have extorted?

Re:More funding for additional work at application

[jonwil]

The answer is to get experts in the field involved in examining patents before they are "rubber stamped".
If people that knew what they were talking about technically (and preferablly leaglly too) were involved in deciding if a patent was valid or not, we wouldnt see so many crappy patents. Enough people would be required to look at it such that people wouldnt be able to say "no, its not valid" because they have a vested interest in being able to use that stuff and not pay for it (also, a simple "no" wouldnt suffice, actual links to prior art or whatever else would need to be presented)

Also, introduce a clause in the rules that says that if a patent is found invalid (either in the initial investigation or later on by a court), the patent holder has to pay up to the PTO.

The idea of "you have to demonstrate your patent somehow" (e.g. for a patent on something like an encryption algorithim, you have to demonstrate working code for it) would also help.