Posted on 07/23/2002 9:11:41 PM PDT by FreedominJesusChrist
Concerning Recent Patent Claims
Considerable interest has been expressed in the views of the JPEG committee concerning claims made by Forgent Networks Inc on their web site concerning intellectual property that Forgent have obtained through their acquisition of Compression Labs Inc. They refer specifically to US Patent 4,698,672, which refers amongst other claims to technology which might be applied in run length coding, found in many technologies including the implementations of a baseline version of ISO/IEC 10918-1, commonly referred to as JPEG.
The committee has examined these claims briefly, and at present believes that prior art exists in areas in which the patent might claim application to ISO/IEC 10918-1 in its baseline form. The committee have also become aware that other organisations including Philips, and Lucent may also be claiming some elements of intellectual property that might be applied to the original JPEG and JBIG (IS 11544 standards). As a response to this, the JPEG committee will be collecting, through its new web site (to be launched shortly) a substantial repository of prior art and it invites submissions, particularly where the content may be applied to claims of intellectual property. A note will be placed on the web site shortly explaining the process for such submissions.
This effort will take some time to organise, but the JPEG committee hope to have it in place prior to its next meeting in Shanghai in October 2002.
It has always been a strong goal of the JPEG committee that its standards should be implementable in their baseline form without payment of royalty and license fees, and the committee would like to record their disappointment that some organisations appear to be working in conflict with this goal. Considerable time has been spent in committee in attempting to either arrange licensing on these terms, or in avoiding existing intellectual property, and many hundreds of organisations and academic communities have supported us in our work.
The up and coming JPEG 2000 standard has been prepared along these lines, and agreement reached with over 20 large organisations holding many patents in this area to allow use of their intellectual property in connection with the standard without payment of license fees or royalties.
Richard Clark
JPEG Webmaster and editor
Committee member since JPEG's formation (and before…).
Reviewed and approved at the 27th WG1 Boston Meeting, July 19 2002
I think that this story is very important...why doesn't anyone else?
No idea but here's a few other postings of articles about the topic over the past few days.......
| Finding patent truth in JPEG claim ^ |
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| Posted by Born to Conserve On Jul 23 2:52 PM with 30 comments CNET News.com ^ | July 22, 2002 | Robert Lemos A small videoconferencing company is laying claim to the ubiquitous JPEG format, igniting a backlash from some consumers and from a standards organization. Austin, Texas-based Forgent Networks posted a press release to its site earlier this month claiming to own a patent covering the technology behind JPEG, one of the most popular formats for compressing and sharing images on the Internet. According to the firm, the devices covered by the patent include cameras, cell phones, camcorders, personal digital assistants, scanners and other devices. It took a little more than a week for the statement to find its way to the... |
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| JPEG guardians vow to defend free images ^ |
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| Posted by JameRetief On Jul 20 7:35 AM with 16 comments The Register USA ^ | July 19, 2002 | Andrew Orlowski By Andrew Orlowski in London Posted: 07/19/2002 at 20:11 EST Yesterday, we broke the story that an obscure Texan video conferencing company is seeking royalties from a patent it acquired five years ago. With the help of a gold-bricking law firm, it wants to collect back royalties from every client device manufacturer which might possibly ever be in receipt of a transmitted JPEG image, and this includes digital cameras, PDAs, phones, scanners and of course, web browsers. As we disclosed, Sony has already paid $15 million for the right to use Forgent's patent. Perhaps "broke the story " isn't the... |
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| Forgent to get rich from JPEG ^ |
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| Posted by Richard Kimball On Jul 19 4:12 AM with 33 comments dpreview.com ^ | July 18, 2002 Forgent Networks (formally known as VTEL) has posted a press release stating their claim to JPEG and their intention to pursue licensing revenue from companies who use it. They own United States patent 4,698,672 which covers the JPEG compression standard, this patent was created by Compression Labs who Forgent bought back in 1997. The press release specifically mentions digital cameras as well as PDA's, web browsers, phones and scanners. It looks as though Sony has already paid $15 million for the privilege... From The Register: "Forgent's most recent SEC filing states that Sony Corporation paid the company $15 million for... |
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| Forgent Networks has a patent on JPEG, and has started demanding huge royalties for it's use. ^ |
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| Posted by Born to Conserve On Jun 17 10:16 PM with 35 comments Various ^ | today | myself AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 10, 2002--Forgent(tm) Networks (Nasdaq:FORG - News), a leading provider of enterprise video network software and services, today announced that it has concluded an intellectual property (IP) license agreement with Sony Corporation covering Forgent's data compression technology embodied in U.S. Patent No. 4,698,672 owned by its subsidiary, Compression Labs Inc. Sony is one of the world's largest manufacturers of digital cameras. Other terms of the IP license agreement were not disclosed. |
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If Forgent's claims are legitimate, do you think they will only go after the big companies? Or will they also go after moderately successful smaller computer companies who may have used some elements of this technology in software programs that they might have developed, say for scanners?
This isn't the time to start a commotion now. For the good of the country, they should just let the patent run for 2 more years and just not say anything.
Why these people are hollering about it now, beats me.
They just want to profit off of other people's hard work and ingenuity.
You just answered your own question.
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