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USPTO Rules Fogent JPEG Patent Invalid
fistfullast33l writes "Groklaw has reported that the USPTO has ruled the broadest claims of the JPEG Patent held by Fogent to be invalid. PUBPAT, the organization that requested the review, released the news earlier today. According to PJ, the ruling will be hard to overturn as the 'submitters knew about the prior art but failed to tell the USPTO about it.'"
all the money they've been paid in licenses, plus interest?
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The patent has not been completely ruled invalid. Some of the claims have not been addressed by the USPTO according to Forgent
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
It's Forgent, not Fogent.
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
This thoroughly details which claims of the patent have been rejected (page 5) and which claims were found patentable (page 26). http://www.pubpat.org/672OA060525.pdf
http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ti cker=forg&script=410&layout=-6&item_id=861407
They very well could. Broad claims are harder to sustain than narrow claims.
No, the core problem wasn't with the patents, although those were bad enough. The core problems are ignorance (most people don't know what options exist), inertia (those who do often won't take advantage of them because it requires change) and stagnation (sufficient inertia kills all incentive to further develop alternatives). I would not be against compulsary education on how to be versatile, for this reason.
It is hard to blame Fogent alone, when the entire national attitude is based so firmly on milking every old idea for what it's worth, whilst the populace make no effort to avoid being bilked. As with those in Dilbert who have met the "world's most desperate Venture Capitalist", it becomes hard not to just take the money and run.
This isn't to say such conduct is good or acceptable - it isn't, in my opinion. Rather, it is to say that we should be addressing the whole problem, not merely a selection of the symptoms.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
JPEG is from the publicly-funded Jet Propulsion Laboratories
Well, that's a novel claim, at least.
JPEG = Joint Photographic Experts Group, not JPL.
It doesn't affect the ruling, but rather it effects the odds of having the ruling overturned on appeal. This is because withholding "material" prior art is considered "inequitable conduct" on the part of the patentee, and the odds of an appellate authority overruling to the benefit of the offending patentee are slim.
Okay, great. But hey forget JPEG. Drum it up for IW44 and DJVU. I just converted a 3.5MB .jpg to a 400K .djvu and can't tell the difference.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Why is it harder to get an invalidation ruling overturned after you failed to mention known prior art? Because every detail of your submission is gone over with a finetoothed comb and you never get the benifit of any doubt.
The rules for prior art are fairly clear, when you file your patent you have to include all of the related prior art you know about and defend why your patent is not covered by the disclosure therein - there are several rules including
- timeframe - a published prior art must be dated 18mths prior to application date
- relatedness - OK it looks similar but it's not really the same thing because....
- progression - Yes A is prior art and B is prior art, but there is no prior art showing A can be linked directly to B. - IE the 'on the internet' loophole.
Groklaw has a writeup by an IP lawyer about what is & isn't useful prior art, but I can't find it at the moment.When you get to relatedness and progression, there is a lot of subjectivity - and having knowingly failed to provide information relavent - all of this will be reviewed with some prejudice against you.
If you knew about a prior art, and did not file it with the patent, you have also done a bunch of things:
- you committed purjury because you have to state you know of no additional prior art when you sign the patent application.
- if the prior art would have been enough to invalidate your patent, you have committed fraud - obtaining services/goods under false pretense.
- made more work for the USPTO. If you file prior art & the reason it's not enough to invalidate your patent, the patent office will blow off the first round of protests, using that prior art, as 'reviewed and deamed insufficient' meaning "we looked at it before we gave the patent & think you're grasping at straws". Puting most of the work on the person seeking to invalidate the patent not the USPTO. On the other hand, if you don't present the prior art, they have to completely review the whole patent.
So in a perfect world, if they failed to file known prior art, this would be a 'bad monkey - no patent for you' moment. They didn't play by the rules, therefore the whole patent and all information contained therein is transfered to the public domain. That's how you make a company play by the rules, you set it up so getting caught cheating not only hurts them, but helps their competition. Unfortunately we all know it's only a perfect world if you have the money to buy the legal system.In this situation, where they have already received the patent and forced companies to pay on the patent, I think those companies might have a civil case for fraud based on the fraud perpetrated on the USPTO ($108M + triple damages isn't pocket change to anyone but MS & GM). Note that if it's just a bad patent and you didn't withhold any information, then there's no fraud, just incompetence on the USPTO's part.
IANAL but this is what I have gathered from Groklaw and a few other sources. If someone wants to correct me please feel free.
Note that 26 of the 46 claims still stand. Only 19 were rejected. JPG isn't out of the infringement woods unless these 26 claims are narrow enough that they don't apply to it.
Also note that the PTO did not conclude that the applicant knew of this art and failed to disclose it. That's just PUBPAT's opinion so far. The inequitable conduct issue would have to be heard by a judge in a lawsuit. If the judge found inequitable conduct, that would kill the entire patent. But that hasn't happened yet.
PUBPAT is doing a fine job of spinning this decision their way, but this is far from a total victory. Yet.
YIIAPLBIANYPL. GYOGDPL. YMNO.
so what about all the companies sued by Forgent? do they get their money back? how about companies that went under due to Forgent suing for patent infringement? do they get restitution?
Corporations are not gtranted patents in the U.S., people are. The corporations get an assignment from their emplyees, which essentially means that the company owns the patent, but the Applicants are always one or more individuals. However, no one goes to jail over this, the patent just gets invalidated.
What Dan Ravicher was referring to is the duty to disclose any known prior art found prior to, or during patent prosecution. Courts have frequently punished patent holders for knowing failing to disclose prior art by invalidating the entire patent. This usually only happens in court when someone gets sued for patent infringement, or when a party takes the issue to court to get a declaratory judgment finding the patent invalid. Surely no one out there wants to spend the money it'd take to get this invalidated in court.
When the issue gets brought up before the PTO, they generally just invalidate the broadest claims, and narrow the scope of the patent until it's worthless.
It's Forgent, not "Fogent".
If they can't even get the name of the company right, I doubt they got the story right. I'll wait until this is covered elsewhere and then pay attention to this story.
No, I don't want to explore the Recycle Bin.