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:Could they be sued? succesfully?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason the patent holders can keep the money is because the law favors them completely.

Let's say I had a company with reasonable funds (enough to support going to court). I have a patent that looks pretty solid so I ask Sony to pay me a license fee. Sony comes back and offers me a contract that says "we agree to pay this license fee, however, the full amount shall be refunded in the event that the patent is invalidated".

My company would just say "sorry, remove that invalidation clause or we'll sue you for patent infringement and win".

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.

The Prior Art:

[TubeSteak]

http://www.pubpat.org/672ReexamOrdered.pdf

Is US Patent No. 4,541,012 to Tescher

Just a short blurb from the reexamination order

"The request details those portions of Tescher as being relevant to claims 1-11 with suggestion that claims 12-46 are either identical to, or obvious implementations of claims 1-11, the detailed claim chart for independant claim 1 is shown on pages 3-4 of the request"

Basically, Tescher preempts claims 1-11 of Chen and claims 12-46 of Chen's patent just repeat 1-11.

The difference

[ad0gg]

Mp3s make you deaf
Jpegs make you blind

Re:Now Linux can support JPEG!

[jonwil]

The difference is that people who know what they are talking about both legally and techically have said that the MPEG patents are valid (no idea if they have been tested in court or not though) but those same people (including the pubpat people) say that the JPEG patent in question is not valid.

Also, a lot more people have been sued for violating (or made to pay licence fees for) the MPEG patents than have been for this JPEG patent

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.

Prior Art demonstrated on ASCII

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just like everyone to know, I've filed a claim of prior art in the name of a long deceased relative on ASCII, and every poster here may be in violation of my patent. Please remove your posts at once or I will be disposed to take legal action. Your IP has been logged.

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.

Pondering...

[jmorris42]

> 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.

Yes, MPEG was always upfront that they were pooling patents and doing the RAND thing. But I have a question. When do they start expiring? I remember a VCD like tech (OS9-68K based, Phillips, brain cramp on the name now.... CDI?) in the late 1980's and VCD (MPEG1 video, MPEG1 layer 1 audio) itself not much later. MPEG1 layer 2 was the failed Phillips Compact Digital Cassette in what, 1992? Question is what is the date on the patents, especially of course on MPEG 1 layer 3 audio and MPEG2 video. AC3 audio is probably several years newer so the last part of DVD and HD-TV won't be public for a bit.

I'm thinking we need to find out and start a countdown, much like everyone did for RSA and the GIF patents.