Patent office to re-examine JPEG patent

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will re-examine the validity of the so-called JPEG patent held by Forgent Networks, an action that could deprive the company of its multimillion-dollar revenue stream.

The Patent Office granted the review at the request of the Public Patent Foundation, which says it is a not-for-profit legal services foundation interested in protecting the public against harm caused by patents. The president of the group is Dan Ravicher, a patent attorney, while Eben Moglen from the Free Software Foundation is a director. Last year, the group says it got Pfizer to narrow patent claims on Lipitor.

The organization could not be reached for comment and it's Web site does not state who funds it.

The Patent Office accepts many requests for re-examination. In 70 percent of the cases, the Patent Office will make some sort of change, said the foundation, although many of the changes stop short of invalidating the patent.

More: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6034544.html

You know, just about every color image you see on line is a jpeg...

[Ian David]

1. The government is REALLY desperate to stamp-out porn. n/t

[dbackjon]

3. How does your comment connect?

You lost me.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

4. The compression used by your computer and camera could

possibly be affected by changes caused by a lawsuit.

Not likely, but a remote possibility in my paranoid world. :evilgrin:

[Deja Q]

2. Hmmm, I betcha they'll review the patent causing the Blackberry tussle too

And, magically, that will become overturned too. :rofl:

[cdsilv]

5. Jont Photography Expert Group????

isn't that what jpeg stands for? I thought this was a standard and was patented by
some standards group?

Is this another case of someone patenting a standard and calling it their own, without having to do any work on the technology itself?

Kind of like patenting the letter W.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

6. This suprised me as well.

[anotherdrew]

7. started in '02 - an ambush patent - background info and link

It's another lame excuse to make money by extorting it with legal threats. This kind of abuse of the patent system should encure heavy fines, not be rewarded. I hope to hell they yank this BS patent, if they don't it's precedent for more of these patent ambush tactics. M$ was seriously considering making people pay a licence fee to use the old-as-the-hills FAT filesystem.

Suddenly a JPEG Patent and Licensing Fee

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Jul 18, '02 12:06 PM
from the where-have-I-heard-this-before. dept.
Patents

Michael Long writes "Forgent Networks (www.forgentnetworks.com) has announced that it owns the software patent on JPEG compression technology, and has stated that it is "in contact" with computer, software, camera, and other digital imaging product manufacturers regarding licensing terms. This ambush of the digitial imaging industry will probably stand as the worst public relations nightmare a company can inflict upon itself."
http://slashdot.org/yro/02/07/18/157217.shtml?tid=155

[KamaAina]

8. "Make it so, Number Two."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/02/business/RIM.php?rss

A preliminary ruling by the U.S. patent office further undermined legal claims by a company that has sought to shut the BlackBerry wireless e-mail device in the United States.

Research In Motion, the Canadian maker of the BlackBerry, said the decision on Wednesday meant that the patent office had twice rejected all five patents controlled by NTP that are related to BlackBerry litigation.

NTP is an intellectual property company based in Arlington, Virginia.

Shares of Research in Motion, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, rose $6.08 Wednesday, or 9 percent, to close at $73.61 on the Nasdaq market.

As nearly as I ca tell, an "intellectual property company" is an outfit that buys up other people's patents and "creates wealth" with them by employing them in court cases such as this.