Digital Home Thoughts: Forgent JPEG Patent May be Invalid

"In the reexamination proceeding initiated late last year by the Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT"), the United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected the broadest claims of the patent Forgent Networks (Nasdaq: FORG) is asserting against the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) international standard for the electronic sharing of photo-quality images. In its Office Action released yesterday, the Patent Office found that the prior art submitted by PUBPAT completely anticipated the broadest claims of the patent, U.S. Patent No. 4,698,672 (the '672 Patent). Forgent Networks acquired the '672 Patent through the purchase of Compression Labs, Inc. in 1997 and began aggressively asserting it against the JPEG standard through lawsuits and the media in 2004. The company has the opportunity to respond to the Patent Office's rejection, but third party requests for reexamination, like the one filed by PUBPAT, result in having the subject patent either modified or completely revoked roughly 70% of the time."

It's not a slam dunk, but this is great news if Forgent and their army of patent lawyers can be put down. If you're Microsoft, and, say you just came out with a new image format because you wanted to offer the industry an alternative to the current standard which is causing everyone to get sued...this isn't good news. But for the rest of us, and the companies making cameras and a myriad of other devices that read/write JPEG files, this is great news!