Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Even if they didn't know about the prior art, why should it affect the ruling if prior art was involved? Since they knew about prior art but didn't report it, they should be fined.
Why does it take them so d@mn long to accomplish this in the first place? Even when a patent is finally ruled invalid -- and should have never been granted in the first place -- it seems it happens only after years of legal damage. No one is served well by this, except the lawyers.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I vote for jailed. Fines are just a part of doing business, and do not appear to be much of a deterrent these days.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How many times do we need to go through this before it is clear that the patent system, wrt software, is broken. I am *NOT* necessarily against patents for software, but it is just about impossible to do prior art, becuase there is so much out there for a few years and then gone. Worse, the examiners don't have enough background to do the job, etc.
The peer review system that is being discussed sounds like a step in the right direction. There also needs to be some significantly less costly way to deal with claims of infringement and the ndefense than the Courts. Small companies can't afford to defend their patents or to challenge someone with deep pockets trying to enforce a patently bogus patent!
Don't forget that the primary purpose of corporations is to avoid personal liability and responsibility. It is both difficult to jail a corporation or jail individuals working for a corporation for corporate misbehavior.
1. Yes, the patent system is severely broken, and it's flawed. Yes, the European version is better. Yes, patents (my grandfather had a few) should only last 17 years period, as the intention is to force publication of such information/concepts/executions so that everyone may gain from such public knowledge through a time-limited license, and the extensions we currently grant work against such concepts. But, let's face it, unless you have a few billion dollars, they will ignore what we say on this matter, for they are corrupt.
2. We need more public patents - and we need places like universities and colleges and publicly-funded institutions to file them, or at least on renewal reclassify the patent as a public patent but administer it, with a portion of revenues being used to reform the patent system.
3. Software is not, nor should it every be, patentable. Copyright? Sure. I published freeware and shareware at the dawn of public computing (70s/80s). But not patentable, nor should business processes nor conceptual methods be patentable. It is just plain wrong.
I don't expect you to agree with me, but I think this latest USPTO ruling brings up the issue on the public JPEG usage. JPEG is from the publicly-funded Jet Propulsion Laboratories - which we pay for with taxes. Open source depends on public patents, or at worst private patents signed over to OSF and other groups to administer.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"However, that's largely moot - PNG is lossless and often compresses better than JPEG, but JPEG is still the format of choice for, say, digital camera makers and websites"
PNG was not made to replace JPG, so I wouldn't call anything moot. PNG is not made for photographs, which make up a decent percentage of pictures out there. I actually don't know of any competing formats to jpeg other than this new microsoft one - how come no one has built an open format like PNG for photos?
That is not what you stated though.
You stated that this would be unreasonable punishment if they weren't convicted of a crime, that is precisely what you stated. Which is very strange since what was proposed is a punishment that could be levied in just such a case.
Of course it would be wrong to bar people from jobs in certain industries for no reason. But the idea of preventing someone convicted of a crime from doing so again, where's the problem?
Let's put it in some perspective via an example: Should a cop that abuses his power and is convicted of doing so to commit a crime be able to continue being a cop? Why shouldn't an executive convicted of something like fraud on a large scale be barred from continuing to do business in the industry they purported the crime in in the first place? Wow, a punishment that fits the crime, how novel.
No Comment.
I'm not particularly arguing FOR anything... merely arguing against the premise that the executives be somehow barred from starting up another, possibly identical, business.
Why not? Medical doctors who compromise their patients' safety for their own gain can lose their license to practice. Lawyers who break the rules of their profession can be disbarred. Stockbrokers who trade illegaly on insider information lose their license and go to jail. Scientists who plagiarize or falsify their results become pariahs in their fields, and although they are not necessarily sanctioned by the law or a licensing body, nevertheless they effectively can no longer practice. Ditto perhaps for artists, musicians, writers, etc. All of these people find some other way to make a living.
The problem, I suppose, is that in the business world, flaunting the rules without getting caught is something that one's peers often admire because it can increase profits. I'm not saying businesspeople gone bad should always be banned for life from their fields, but some kind of progressive punishment that includes a professional sanction is, I think, appropriate.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Not really sure I agree with either one of you guys, however perhaps I'm just an optomist but I'd rather not think of the poliece as an "industry" per se.
It doesn't matter what you call it -- an "industry", an "estate" of society, an "institution", whatever -- the point is that individuals who have been handed authority must also accept the other side of that coin: responsibility.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.