Forgent Networks has a patent on JPEG, and has started demanding huge royalties for it's use.

Various ^ | today | myself

[Born to Conserve]

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.

[Born to Conserve]

This might be huge. Forgent, in there webcast audio quarterly earnings report, said that the patents may apply to $100,000,000,000 worth of goods, and that they are entitled to 1 to 2-1/2 percent of the gross sales. Devices using the patent include digital cameras, scanners, inkjet printers, PDAs, and many others. They received $15,000,000 from an un-named Japanese digital camera manufacturer last may, and just receive an undisclosed amount from Sony.

This does not seem to be getting covered by the press or the financial community, only company releases.

This reminds me of the Unisys-GIF-LZW affiar in 1995.

If there is a freeper that understands highly technical patents, I wish he would look at this and let us know if it is as big as they are saying (1% of $100,000,000,000 is one B-Billion dollars!). Forgent's current market capital is only $128,000,000.

[krb]

I think this looks weak. It doesn't matter, though, someone will come up with a better way if JPEG gets crushed.

US4698672: Coding system for reducing redundancy

The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for processing signals to remove redundant information thereby making the signals more suitable for transfer through a limited-bandwidth medium. The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in video compression systems. Typically, the system determines differences between the current input signals and the previous input signals using mean-square difference signals. These mean-square signals are processed and compared with one or more thresholds for determining one of several modes of operation. After processing in some mode, the processed signals are in the form of digital numbers and these digital numbers are coded, using ordered redundancy coding, and transmitted to a receiver.

[stylin_geek]

Well, based on their stock price, the article does not amount to anything. Their stock price is not rated as a buy, and it has only gone up 5.5% (roughly) and their stock is trading at around $5.00 a share. By the way, I pulled the stock information from CNBC.

[dighton]

Forgent's press release nowhere mentions JPEG. Are you sure it's not some other compression technique?

[Born to Conserve]

Then why did Sony pay who knows how much, and (Cannon?--speculation) pay 15,000,000?

The theory is that the patent subsumes the claim in an earlier patent for DCT in general. But that's just a theory.

The stock is not doing so well -- only up about 60% over the last few days. It is up 500% over the last year. < /sarcasm>

[dighton]

isn't not

[dighton]

Dighton, drink some coffee or go to bed.

[Born to Conserve]

The stock analysts appearently do not like to analyse lump sum payments. The reason I am posting this is becuase I want to know why there is such a disparity between the stock evaluation and the story.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Open source to the rescue. PNG to be exact.

[jae471]

Nothing to see here... move along...

From the official jpeg homepage:
The best known standard from JPEG is IS 10918-1 (ITU-T T.81), which is the first of a multi-part set of standards for still image compression. A basic version of the many features of this standard, in association with a file format placed into the public domain by C-Cube Microsystems (JFIF) is what most people think of as JPEG!

[Born to Conserve]

There is a mass inference that they are talking about JPEG. JPEG (JFIF) is the only format that is applied in the scale that Forgent has implied, to the divices it mentioned. The question, assuming that it is JPEG, is, is it baseline JPEG, or a more obscure annex of JPEG. The patent discusses a previous Forgent(CLI) patent on DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) encoding, and it mentions a modification to the post-processing of the DCT output. DCT is an integral part of JPEG.

[Born to Conserve]

PNG is a suitable replacement for GIF, but not for JPEG.

[alancarp]

Looks to me like the cat's already been out of the bag: check the (slightly) longer-term performance of the FORG stock: Back around Sept 1st of 2001, they were trading near $1/share. Recently, they've further jumped from $3 to $5+. Find me another stock that's gone up 500% in the past nine months!

[mhking]

Slashdot.org hasn't touched this one - if there were truly an issue here, they'd be all over it. Sounds like a big dustup over nothing.

[Born to Conserve]

You can't place something in the public domain if you do not own it! :) (I don't think Sony's lawyers are that stupid . . .)

[Born to Conserve]

It may be a dust up as you say, but there are companies paying tens of millions of dollars for the dust.

[TrappedInLiberalHell]

Between this, and the whole flap over whether Bell really invented the telephone, I expect caveman Og to travel forward in time and demand a royalty every time someone strikes a match, flicks their cigarette lighter, etc. Soon to be followed by Urg, who will make similar demands each time a wheel rotates somewhere on Earth.

[Born to Conserve]

Slashdot is not what it used to be . . . They are there to get money, and run everything they say past the lawyers before they publish it.

[Michael Barnes]

hehehe...Beat me to it..I wa getting ready to post PNG