Forgent Networks announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary, Compression Labs Inc., has initiated litigation against 31 companies for infringement of United States Patent No. 4,698,672 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division. Over the last two years, Forgent’s intellectual property business has generated approximately $90 million from licensing the ‘672 Patent to 30 different companies in Asia, Europe and the United States. Forgent has sought to reach agreements on numerous occasions with all these companies, but as of today, none of the defendants have chosen to license. Forgent has retained Jenkens & Gilchrist, a national law firm, and The Roth Law Firm, of Marshall Texas, to represent it in the litigation.
The defendants are: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Agfa Corporation, Apple Computer Incorporated, Axis Communications Incorporated, Canon USA, Concord Camera Corporation, Creative Labs Incorporated, Dell Incorporated, Eastman Kodak Company, Fuji Photo Film Co U.S.A, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Gateway Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, International Business Machines Corp., JASC Software, JVC Americas Corporation, Kyocera Wireless Corporation, Macromedia Inc., Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, Oce’ North America Incorporated, Onkyo Corporation, PalmOne Inc., 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., Toshiba Corporation and Xerox Corporation.
The ‘672 Patent relates to digital image compression, and fields of use include any digital still image device used to compress, store, manipulate, print or transmit digital still images such as digital cameras. However, the ‘672 patent extends beyond digital cameras and includes many digital still image devices such as personal digital assistants, cellular telephones, printers, scanners and other devices used to compress, store, manipulate, print or transmit digital still images. Forgent has the exclusive right to use, license and enforce all the claims under the ‘672 Patent in all fields of use involving digital still image compression.
“Forgent is committed to developing all of its assets and technologies to maximize shareholder value. We believe we will prevail in this litigation as the ‘672 Patent is valid, enforceable and infringed,” said Richard Snyder, chairman and CEO of Forgent in the press release. “It’s unfortunate that despite the many opportunities these companies have had to license the patent, they have all declined to participate, leaving us no alternative but to litigate.”
Forgent Networks provides a spectrum of scheduling software that enable organizations to streamline the planning and execution of their meetings, helping to increase productivity and reduce costs. Forgent’s offerings include Network Simplicity’s Meeting Room Manager, which provides room scheduling, and ALLIANCE, which provides unified scheduling of all meeting logistics using the corporate calendaring platforms of Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook. Forgent also generates and licenses intellectual property related to collaboration technologies. For additional information visit [url=http://www.forgent.com]http://www.forgent.com[/url]
What? MicroSlop not included in the defendants?
it’s like a who’s who of the tech sector..
that’s why MS is not a part of it..
either that or they have good lawyers who do their homework… *badoom CHING
Is this M$+SCO sort of thing?
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USA is totally freak with these patent issues.
I think I will patent sex in the USA and then sue everyone even those who do not make sex. I am not sure… eating is already patented by McDonalds?
My sex patent will include compress, store, manipulate, print and transmit parts.
Compress and de-compress penis.
Store sperm, milk, babies (up to nine months) and needs.
Manipulate partner so that he/she wants sex.
Print marriage licenses or divorce papers.
Transmit feromones, sperm, children etc
Yes. Thats what I am going to do
It is so funny that these companies who haven’t invented anything owns patents that are so obvious and that you can patent these kind of things in USA is plain stupid. We can all blame Bush. (I maybe have to patent the Blame Bush thing too it is like blame Canada*1000 000 sorry *150 billion (amount of money wasted in Iraq or *xxxx billion stolen from poor Americans)
not to get too deeply into anything, but i think the average joe’s understanding of patent law doesn’t really go far enough to understand most patent suits. for example, guy from finland, you couldn’t patent sex unless you could prove you were the first to invent it….which is obviously disproven by the existence of the human race for the past few thousand years. patent law is complicated, which is why patent lawyers exist, to learn this stuff and sort it all out. and why did you have to bring bush into this? as if he singlehandedly, over the past couple centuries of legislation in the USA, found a way to change US patent law. I haven’t heard anyone make a statement like that since 3rd grade, where disputes are backed up by “i told you so’s” and “he started it’s.” grow up about 20 years and maybe we’ll start talking about politics.
Youre gonna blame Bush for the patent suits in the USA? are you cracked? How about instead of whining about everything that is wrong in the world everyone who is whining get involved in some worthwhile cause (that doesn’t involve being a human shield for a despot) and start to solve some real problems instead of looking for a “messiah” to lead them to everlasting peace in this life. Jesus, God, Allah, etc is what we look for in the afterlife, in life we are supposed to take responsibility for our actions. Sorry for the rant, but Im tired of the whining.
Considering that Microsoft supports pretty much the same compressed image formats as Apple, I see 2 possibilities:
1. MS licenses the patent. Unlikely since it is Microsoft standard procedure to steal, cheat, buy, E3 (extend, embrace, extinguish).
2. MS paid for the license and fund the lawsuit a la SCO as our friend from Finland mentioned. Very likely since the current trend is to manipulate the law enforcement to their advantage.
finland what the hell are you blabbering about. please shut up
Finland LOL you seem to have started something here.
Good luck Forgent. Next you will be saying that you invented the computer and everything that goes along with it. Get real, do you think these companies will roll over? I guess they didn’t want to go after MS because they feel MS is playing by the rules? What about Real Networks, Divx, Sun and every other company that has some kind of compression. Doh! Did they invent the process of math calculations as well? Not to mention all the political connections these companies have. Can you say, “small fish in a freak’n huge pond….full of sharks”?
steve m “which is obviously disproven by the existence of the human race for the past few thousand years”
Do I spot a creationist in our midst? Surely you mean millions?
I only looked through the patent quickly, but my comments/thoughts so far:
1)The application date is 27 October 1986. There had to be prior art to this since many forms of video compression were in use before then.
2)The application describes a specific form of compression I know the US Gov uses on some of its deep space missions. It may have been either in use or in the lab before 27 October 1986.
The US has a “first to invent” rather than a “first to file” patent system. The author of the patent would have to prove that he invented that form of compression earlier than any other person. He needs to have lab notes or something to prove it. He also must not have discussed it with other people without restriction prior to 27 October 1985. If any company or organization (HP, Apple, IBM, JPL, SGI, Sony, JVC, etc.) can show in lab notebooks or engineer’s journals that they discussed this same technique prior to any proof provided by the author of this patent then the patent is dead.
My personal opinion of these companies which file lots of patents but never try to make them into something should all be stopped. You should be FORCED to have at least attempted to turn your patent into something real. It is not the purpose of the patent system for someone to think of hundreds or thousands of different implementations of things, file for the patents on all those different implementations, then sit back and wait for someone else to invent something similar enough that you can sue them.
The purpose of patents is that you disclose the concept and then you get exclusive rights to make/sell the patented item for a finite number of years. The public then gets the right to make as many copies as it wants after the patent expires because you disclosed it to get the patent in the first place. A reasonable trade. This way the inventor gets exclusive use to make/sell things and the public gets access to new ideas after a finite period of time.
It is also interesting that the suit is filed now. This patent probably comes under the 17 year rule. Thus the patent expires 17 years after it was issued (this rule is now changed for new patents). Thus it probably expires 7 October 2004 — less than six months from now. It’s as if they said, “We can’t get them to license our questionable patent, and it’s expiring soon. We better sue them!”
steve m
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Few thousand years =)
I knew it! With a good lawyer I can reduce that so that my sex patent will go through in the USA and I don’t even have to sue Jesus, Allah, God or Mohammed. Excellent news!
I am also sure that M$ will invest money in this
steve m
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According to all of these churches there is no sex.. only breeding. They have patented breeding. I will patent sex and patent also those things that I did not invent. In that way I can get license fees of everything
LOL
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It is long time I’ve heard that some one says
“which is obviously disproven by the existence of the human race for the past few thousand years”
What do you think.. Should I also claim a patent that world is flat like pizza and moon is actually made of cheese
Oi, that’s not me. That’s aimed at me.
Don’t forget that the sun goes round the Earth, which is at the centre of the universe.
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Sorry Dave it was me=One Guy from Finland. I managed to miss place one line 🙁
I did not mean it like that way 🙁
I mean that what steve h said is so funny.
LOL
It is long time I’ve heard that some one says
“which is obviously disproven by the existence of the human race for the past few thousand years”
What do you think.. Should I also claim a patent that world is flat like pizza and moon is actually made of cheese
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I forgot that Earth the centre of the universe part. I was so occupied with that pizza thing. I hope that Italians haven’t patented it before me
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I mean Finnish cheese does not have that big holes so it must be Swiss cheese. LOL
From what I can see, this is actually accusing Apple of infringing the patent in question through iPhoto, and the vast majority of the other defendants (JASC and Adobe are obvious exceptions) are in the dock because of their ‘conspiracy’ to provide us with digital cameras either as stand-alone devices or as functionality within other devices such as phones and PDAs.
Are they effectively talking about run-length encoding? And does the patent apply to any application that uses JPEG?
If their problem is JPEG, surely they should have been speaking to the standards body about their patent when the standard was developed?
One guy, you’re completely forgiven.
I don’t even think the Swiss are members of the WTO, so you’d have to go to the Patent Office in Zurich if you want to patent the Moon there. It’s that famous Swiss neutrality again.
Happy St. George’s Day BTW (or San Jordi in Catalunya).
But MCCFR, standards bodies don’t have lots of money to pay the lawyer’s fees, whereas Apple has that famous $4.6bn in the bank. I also wonder if MS are indemnified against this patent in some way, which is why they’re not included on the suit. Perhaps through their licensing of Kodak technology.
Dave H
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Okay. Then I have to fly to WWDC via Z�rich then instead of Heathrow. It is okay though because Swiss International Air Lines is now oneworld alliance partner with Finnair and British Airways
Dave are you going to WWDC? If yes have you booked your trip? If no why not?
I’m not going One Guy. It would take some creative writing on my CV to describe myself as a developer. I just spec out, implement, and support other people’s stuff for my clients according to their needs. If you’re really asking whether I’m going to Pride, also a no. If you live in London and own property in Sitges, you don’t need San Francisco
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Surely there is prior art for this kind of stuff? It’s a patent from 1986, image compression was around before then, surely?
Dave
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” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”raspberry” style=”border:0;” /> )
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The Pride thing is just good extra
In the WWDC there is very many interesting QuickTime sessions too. Check out:
http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/calendar/monday_pm.html
WWDC is so much fun. (Even without Pride
I have booked my flights already and I am flying to Heathrow first.. Maybe I have to check Sitges too
Then again we are creative people so there should not be any problem to change that Carriculum Vitae so start writing
Another SCO… Another Apple Corps…