Forgent Sues 31 Companies For JPEG Infringements

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.dpreview.com/news/0404/04042302forgentjpeglawsuits.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.dpreview.com/news/0404/04042302forgentjpeglawsuits.asp</a><br /><br /></div>"Forgent Networks announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Compression Labs Inc., has initiated litigation against 31 companies for infringement of United States Patent No. 4,698,672 (the '672 Patent) in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division. Over the last two years, Forgent's intellectual property business has generated approximately $90 million from licensing the '672 Patent to 30 different companies in Asia, Europe and the United States. Forgent has sought to reach agreements on numerous occasions with all these companies, but as of today, none of the defendants have chosen to license. Forgent has retained Jenkens &amp; Gilchrist, a national law firm, and The Roth Law Firm, of Marshall Texas, to represent it in the litigation."<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/ForgentNetworks.gif" /> <br /><br />Forgent has made good on their claim on JPEG and have basically sued 31 different companies, including from Apple, Adobe, Canon, Kodak, Fuji, Panasonic, Toshiba, Xerox, etc. over patent infringements. This will be interesting to watch because if Forgent does succeed, I wonder whether either the cost of cameras and/or jpeg creation/editing software will go up or we will start seeing a shift to other compression algorithms. PNG anyone?

[Jason Dunn]

You know, it makes you wonder if the companies who decide to use JPEG just said "Eh, whatever, let's use it and see if this company decides to enforce their patent" or if Forgent Networks is trying to pull a fast one. What amazes me is the number of standards (FAT, JPEG) are suddenly under the gun.

If this company starts enforcing their patent, it would make the Compuserve GIF patent look like a walk in the park. It would mean that every piece of software or hardware on the market today that can write a JPEG file would be under the gun. 8O

[Gary Sheynkman]

8O

wow I thought JPEG was one of those things that belonged to everyone. You dont need a liscence to make a MP3 encoder...can you imagine if they went after people too? I hate out litigious society, but Forgent will drown themselves in cash after this...but then again Mr. Gates has VERY good lawyers

[James Fee]

Well that was the hope when they created it, but as you can see, it doesn't always work out that way.

AFAIK, PNG (http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/) is totally open right? (though a JPEG will usually be smaller than a PNG)

[Jason Dunn]

You dont need a liscence to make a MP3 encoder...can you imagine if they went after people too?

You do:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html

And they are, but only if it's worthwhile for them. MP3 has never been free, although the playback portion was for a time.

[Jason Dunn]

AFAIK, PNG (http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/) is totally open right? (though a JPEG will usually be smaller than a PNG)

Yes, PNG is open, but because it's not a lossy compression scheme, it will never replace JPEG because the file sizes will never be in the same ballpark...

[James Fee]

Yes, PNG is open, but because it's not a lossy compression scheme, it will never replace JPEG because the file sizes will never be in the same ballpark...
Yea, that is what I thought. Maybe we need to look at another version of PNG for digital photos.

[Steve]

Well, based on how JPEG compressions do their job, it would be relatively easy to make a similar algorithm that worked in the same way, wouldn't it? Or would that be against the law :)

GIF sucks 50% of the time, PNG is lossless, and JPG is against the rules?

What a world. I guess it's time for a new open source algorithm for our software and hardware. JPG is extremely universal, so it would be tricky to introduce something new. Then again, maybe something better could come of it. But that would be extremely hard, seeing as JPG's seem to be the most logical lossy format.

[Crocuta]

You know, if everyone on the Net would actually get motivated not to just lay down and accept these sudden appearances of patent holders years after something has been a standard, this could go like the whole .arc to .zip switch back when only academics used the Internet, and hobbiests communicated worldwide through a network of local bulletin board systems (BBSs). For you young folks, a BBS was just a PC hooked up to one or more phone lines and running special software to allow us to do the same sort of thing that we do here at DMT today. There were forums and file exchanges and so forth, mostly run by hobbiests in their homes, and the local BBSs exchanged and synchronized these by calling each other at night.

Those who've been around long enough (this is back in DOS days) will remember that everyone used to use .arc compression for all the things we use .zip for now. It was free and the online community supported it and even worked with the developer (SEA) to improve it. Then, after it was fully a standard, SEA decided it was time to collect royalties from everyone who used it. Naturally, people freaked out because everyone from large developers to teenage shareware authors were using .arc files for distribution over the BBS system, and many had the technology built into their programs.

One such home-based developer was (the late) Phil Katz who had developed a faster, easier way to ARC your files with a program called PKArc. He was particularly targetted by SEA and the BBS community was livid.

To make a long story less long, I don't know if I've ever seen such a fast change over of standards in my life. Katz went back to work and developed a program called PKZip using a new compression algorithm (the .zip you use today) and it was adopted almost overnight. It was not just that .zip was a huge leap forward in compression technology (and it was), but it was a community of people responding resoundingly to the heavy-handed tactics of a company that did exactly what Forgent is doing now with JPEG.

I don't know if there is enough of a sense of community on the Net for this to happen again, but collectively we hold the power to make or break the JPEG standard if we'll just use it. First, we should let the courts determine if Forgent even has a valid patent. But if they win, then the online community should revisit the past for a lesson in how to treat companies that try to play this game.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

OT: Hah, BBSes, I remember those glorious days! Started with a 9600bps modem!

Wasn't there when the move to zip happened though, as you can tell, heh.