JPEG INFRINGEMENT CLUB: APPLE HAS TARGET ON IT
Forgent Networks announced that its subsidiary, Compression Labs Inc., has initiated patent infringement litigation against Apple (as well as 30 other companies - woah, now that is ambitious) for infringing US Patent No. 4,698,672 covering digital compression technology -- allegedly the technology behind JPEG compression. The patent, which issued in 1987, will expire October 27, 2006 (TIP: if a U.S. patent was issued or pending as of June, 1995 -- it is entitled to 17 years from issuance or 20 years from filing -- whichever is longer. Slashdot got the calculation wrong.)
Slashdot also wonders why Compression waited so long to file suit -- but according to the press release, Compression attempted and negotiated for several years to enter into a licensing agreement with the parties. The delay shouldn't bar the infringement action, but it will limit the damages that Compression can seek by allowing them to only go back 6 years per 35 USC 286 (no recovery for damages more than six years prior to filing an infringement complaint). The action was presumably filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas which maintains a patent "rocket docket" (an expedited process for patent infringement cases) under Judge T. John Ward-- so this should be a fairly quickly developing case.
Claim 1 reads as follows:
1. A method for processing digital signals, where the digital signals have first values, second values and other values, to reduce the amount of data utilized to represent the digital signals and to form statistically coded signals such that the more frequently occurring values of digital signals are represented by shorter code lengths and the less frequently occurring values of digital signals are represented by longer code lengths, comprising,
forming first runlength code values representing the number of consecutive first values of said digital signals followed by said second value,
forming second runlength code values representing the number of consecutive first values of said digital signals followed by one of said other values.
According to Forgent, its "intellectual property business" has generated approximately $90 million from licensing of this patent worldwide, but did not specify the damages against each company. Forgent has unsuccessfully sought to reach agreements on numerous occasions with the companies named in the suit.
The named defendants are: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE), Agfa Corporation, Apple Computer Incorporated (Nasdaq:AAPL), Axis Communications Incorporated, Canon USA, Concord Camera Corporation (Nasdaq:LENS), Creative Labs Incorporated, Dell Incorporated (Nasdaq:DELL), Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE:EK), Fuji Photo Film Co U.S.A, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Gateway Inc. (NYSE:GTW), Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ), International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), JASC Software, JVC Americas Corporation, Kyocera Wireless Corporation, Macromedia Inc. (Nasdaq:MACR), Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, Oce' North America Incorporated, Onkyo Corporation, PalmOne Inc. (Nasdaq:PLMO), Panasonic Communications Corporation of America, Panasonic Mobile Communications Development Corporation of USA, Ricoh Corporation, Riverdeep Incorporated (d.b.a. Broderbund), Savin Corporation, Thomson S.A. (NYSE:TMS), Toshiba Corporation and Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX).