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Judge Puts JPEG Patent On Ice
from the ray-niro's-gotta-wait dept
The infamous and questionable JPEG patent held by Global Patent Holdings (GPH) and used to threaten just about anyone online (including the Green Bay Packers, CDW, a resort in Florida and others) who happened to have a JPEG on their website has been put on hold for a while. While the folks behind it somehow got Forbes to write a puff piece making it sound like the patent holder was the victim, if you look at the details, it was clear that this was an abuse of the patent system. It was a questionable patent from the beginning, and an earlier review of the patent had every claim thrown out. However, during that process, the patent holder tried adding a ton of other claims -- one of which the USPTO actually allowed to go through. It's that single remaining claim that's being used to sue lots of folks. However, with the USPTO recently agreeing to re-examine that one claim, those being sued have asked the court to put all of the cases on hold until the re-exam is done. As we've pointed out, all too often, judges refuse to wait for the Patent Office to re-examine a patent -- which is a big problem, since so many re-exams result in rejected claims.
However, that's not the case here. Last week, the judge ruled that it made sense to stay the case until the re-exam was complete. GPH protested this move, noting that the patent had already been re-examined before, and that process took many years during which GPH couldn't enforce the patent. However, the court reasonably responded on a few different points. First, it noted that while the length of the re-exam last time was quite long, with only one claim it shouldn't take as long this time. Second, it pointed out that while it's true the patent was re-examined once before, since this claim is a new claim, it was not re-examined -- only examined. Finally, and most importantly, the court noted that if the courts had not waited, a bad decision likely would have resulted, as they would have had to assume the later rejected claims were valid.
"a significant amount of time and effort in claim construction and other litigation would have been wasted if we had forged ahead without the benefit of the PTO’s examination (and subsequent rejection) of those claims."This should, effectively, keep GPH from filing any more suits on this patent until the USPTO has a chance to review the remaining claim. While other lawsuits can be filed, a quick pointer to this ruling should hopefully keep those cases from going anywhere until the USPTO has reviewed the patent. Oh, and by the way, the judge appears to not have been even remotely swayed by the totally unrelated fact that the original inventors of the patent were old and feeble, which GPH had used in trying to get a sympathy vote. It was so inconsequential the judge doesn't even mention it in the ruling.
20 Comments | Leave a Comment..
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Reader Comments (rss)
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Remaining Claim
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Re: Remaining claim...
They are losing. Going down for the third time, and yet they still are fighting...
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Re: Remaining Claim
As I don't actually understand what that means, I'll leave it up to you.
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Just use PNG
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Statute of limitations?
e
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However, the thought that a great idea that an inventer invested time and money to bring to market become so successful that they aren't due royalties because everyone pirated is unsettling to me...
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Re: Just use PNG
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The law is there, if it was broken, then everyone needs to pay up. Of course it is too much common sense for any judiciary or the American government to understand.
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Re: Statute of limitations?
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Re:
Right, because you are so much smarter than the federal judiciary...
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One Remaining Claim
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week30/OG/html/1320-4/US05253341-20070724.html
Late r.
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Better Link
http://271patent.blogspot.com/2008/04/nd-ill-stays-global-patent-holdings.html
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Re: Just use PNG
PNG uses a lossless compression, much like zip.
At equal dimensions and visibly similar quality, a full colour PNG is way heavier than a JPEG (about 5 times, although that varies a lot on the type of image).
JPEG uses a lossy compression that can be modulated from high-quality (little artefacts, almost as good as the original but large size) to very low quality (lots of artefacts, but very small size).
Look up "Portable Network Graphics" on wikipedia.
JPEG is tremendously useful and necessary. PNG is excellent but not very internet-friendly when full-colour images as so much bigger than their JPG equivalent.
Only solution would be to move to the JPG2000 standard but few applications support it, and there's always the possibility that some patent trolls like GPH would just wait for it to become essential enough before they raise their ugly head.
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Re:
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GPH...
Hrm. I think I used a double redundancy in that last sentence...
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idiotas
"SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed to an improved method and apparatus for displaying audio/visual data and/or graphical/tabular information transmitted from a remote server to an end user station (EUS) for the purpose of decompressing (optional), viewing and/or listening to the responsive data. In operation, the EUS transmits a query to the server for the purpose of initiating a process in the server (e.g. data compression, indexing into a very large database, etc.), via an optional concentrator or requiring the high speed processing, large capacity and multi-distributed data storage, etc. typically included in the server. The EUS provides appropriate inverse processing (e.g. data decompression where appropriate) which, by its nature, requires comparatively fewer computer resources to accomplish. Thus, the method of this invention exploits an inherent asymmetry in the overall process in which an EUS queries a remote server (and/or Server Network) for a data service (e.g. retrieval of audio visual data in faster than real time) where most of the processing power resides in the Server. Data distribution efficiencies for EUS devices can improve by using the intermediary or a concentrator in conjunction with clusters of EUS devices connected via concentrator to a server. FM auxillary service centers can also serve such a function.
In accordance with the present invention, a method for data retrieval from a remote server comprising the following steps and displaying said data is disclosed. The invention comprises the following steps: formulating a query via a data input means and transmitting said query to remote query and data processing means; transmitting said query from said remote query and data processing means to a remote host via input/output means; receiving a compressed or non-compressed response to said query at said remote query and data retrieval system from said remote host via said input/output means; decompressing, said query if compressed; and displaying and optionally providing audio for a presentation corresponding to said query results on a output means."
Do you know what JPEG actually means, punks ?
I doubt it
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The Patent Office Could Get There First.
There are certain types of patents which have a very low likelihood of ever being commercialized, eg. home machines for compacting or recycling garbage (*). The patent office is likely to be flooded with applications for patents covering such machines. Inventing such a machine is the normal husbandly reaction to being asked to take out the trash, and there are literally millions of possible inventors. Some kind of reasonable allocation of priorities would mean that patent applications got processed with a speed commensurate with the likelihood of their becoming the foci of legal disputes.
(*) Garbage is... well... garbage. Low value is inherent in the definition, and therefore a machine handling garbage would have to handle hundreds of tons of garbage to have any chance of showing a profit.
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Re: idiotas
Angry dude, of course it doesn't say JPEG. As is obvious to just about anyone (except you apparently), we're using JPEG as a shorthand to describe the patent. The reason is because the single claim is being used against anyone displaying a JPEG.
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Re: Re: Just use PNG
However, I can see why a lossy format like JPEG is important, since there are still many people with slower modems. Perhaps there should be a move to create an open standard for a lossy format. I would suggest a petition to the W3C, or possibly going the route of Ogg and simply making it an open-source project.
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