Forgent: JPEG Lawsuit

[asian1]

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0404/04042302forgentjpeglawsuits.asp

Forgent had announced lawsuit against 31 major companies. They don't sue Microsoft (IE) because MS plan to buy the license from Forgent. Will Forgent sue Linux Graphics application groups (GIMP, XV, ZGV etc)or Amiga Graphics program vendors?

[Dan]

I tried to read that patent, it just gave me an headache.
Why are all patents written in lawyerish instead of english?

No, give me turn of the century patents with an clear illustration and readable text instead.

[justthatgood]

Software patents are a bunch of BS!!!!!!!!!!!! This company just wants to rape anyone and everyone of cash.  Just look at the defendants they are suing.  These people along with Santa Cruz Operations (SCO), and the other people that own the LZW compression can all choke and goto hell for all I care. :pissed:

[Step]

Hmm, i am waiting for the day when Intel/AMD/IBM/Motorola or whatever claim ownership of all software derived from the use of their architectures, sheeesh that will be the end.

[CodeSmith]

What next, Burn All Jpgs day?

The greed of people never ceases to amaze me.  Software patents are a bad idea generally, but submarine patents should be illegal: If you haven't publically defended your patent once inside of five years, you've lost it.  None of this "wait for everyone to be using it and then start hitting people up for money" nonsense.

[Karlos]

Jeez. {bleep}s.

[weirdami]

I say a patent is a patent. Sue, sue, sue. If you're using somethine illegally, don't come crying to me when you get called on it.

[Lo]

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. Over the last two years, Forgent's has generated $90 million from licensing the patent to 30 different companies.

I forget when the Amiga could first display JPEG's but it was way before '97   :-?

[Morley]

Lo wrote:

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. Over the last two years, Forgent's has generated $90 million from licensing the patent to 30 different companies.

I forget when the Amiga could first display JPEG's but it was way before '97   :-?

I thought JPEG was done on some volounteer free work? Like GPL or something like that? I remember most JPEG decoders had some ackowlegdment like "Independent JPEG group" back in the early 90's..."