Group Finds Prior Art On JPEG Patent; Hopefully Not Compressed As A JPEG
from the all-your-jpgs-are-belong-to-us dept
A few years ago, a small company, Forgent, that owned a patent they never did anything with, suddenly decided that the patent covered the technology used in jpg compression, used across the internet for images. Instead of recognizing that the actual innovation came about having absolutely nothing to do with that patent, the company did what so many patent trolls do: they decided to sue everyone and complain about how much they were owed for doing nothing that had anything to do with the success of a technology. Companies have been fighting Forgent, but now a group claims they've come up with some prior art that could invalidate the patent. Of course, the process is quite involved and difficult, so it's a bit early to say if this will have any impact. The best guess is that it won't and the patent office will turn them down on a review. Either way, though, it doesn't get to the core issue, of why this company that did absolutely nothing to make .jpg a useful compression format (and, didn't even realize they had such a patent for a long time) deserves any money for doing absolutely nothing other than making it difficult for others to actually use the technology.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Get a real job !
bitching about US patent system !
He appeared to find *another* Forgent patent as an *invalidating prior art* ! How interesting!
It takes about 3 minutes spent on www.uspto.gov to find all Forgent patents.
Why did it take them so long ? The patent in question will expire next year.
Is this just a silly joke or this guy is a glory hog ?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Get a real job !
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Get a real job !
For starters, I can suggest to go to www.uspto.gov/patft , "quick search" and
type "Compression Labs, Inc." in the assignee field.
All 12 Forgent patents come up immediately.
Patents 4,698,672 (in question) and 4,541,012 (submited as "prior art") are listed next to each
other...
To me this whole re-examination thing looks ridiculous.
After 100 million $ or so Forgent managed to obtain
from Sony and other large companies over the
course of several years ?
And nobody at those companies even looked at other
Forgent patents ?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
New Solution Needed
A good one should be built using Open Source Code. Files sizes would have to be small for photo-quality images, and the file format should be able to support animation like .gif files do now. An all in one file format to please everyone and its free for anyone to impliment.
I'm no programmer, I'm trying to give the code-master here something to think about.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: New Solution Needed
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: New Solution Needed
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: New Solution Needed
http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/14/Autos/funonwheels/audi_diesel_racer/index.htm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
New Solution is Available
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: New Solution is Available
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: New Solution is Available
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: New Solution is Available
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: New Solution is Available
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: New Solution Needed
[ link to this | view in chronology ]