Wednesday, July 24, 2002
No more JPEGs - ISO to withdraw image standard
Posted by Jason Dunn in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 02:00 PM
http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25711.html
Would one of you reading this in Austin, Texas, go give the CEO at Forgent a smack upside the head? I can't believe those greedy fools are trying to take control of the JPEG format - Unisys and GIF was bad enough, but this is downright stupid. Patents were created to protect the inventor from the Big Guys, not to give the Big Guys a stick to chase others around with. Hey Forgent, listen up: try making a real product and selling it to earn an income for your company instead of trying to live off an ancient patent like some deadbeat teenager living with his mom.
"The ISO standards body will take the unprecedented step of withdrawing the JPEG image format as a formal standard if Forgent Networks, a small Texan company, continues to demand royalties on a seventeen-year old patent. The Register has spoken to representatives of both the JPEG committee and Forgent Networks this week. According to Richard Clark, JPEG committee member and JPEG.org webmaster, Forgent's royalty grab - coming after two decades of royalty-free use - means that ISO is obliged to withdraw the specification.
"Under ISO terms, formally you can only have a standard you can implement on free or RAND terms. "Reasonable and non discriminatory (RAND) terms are typically published, and the same for everyone. It's clear that Forgent's claims are not RAND. $15 million doesn't sound like free to me, and Forgent is not publishing the terms of their licensing."
Would one of you reading this in Austin, Texas, go give the CEO at Forgent a smack upside the head? I can't believe those greedy fools are trying to take control of the JPEG format - Unisys and GIF was bad enough, but this is downright stupid. Patents were created to protect the inventor from the Big Guys, not to give the Big Guys a stick to chase others around with. Hey Forgent, listen up: try making a real product and selling it to earn an income for your company instead of trying to live off an ancient patent like some deadbeat teenager living with his mom.
"The ISO standards body will take the unprecedented step of withdrawing the JPEG image format as a formal standard if Forgent Networks, a small Texan company, continues to demand royalties on a seventeen-year old patent. The Register has spoken to representatives of both the JPEG committee and Forgent Networks this week. According to Richard Clark, JPEG committee member and JPEG.org webmaster, Forgent's royalty grab - coming after two decades of royalty-free use - means that ISO is obliged to withdraw the specification.
"Under ISO terms, formally you can only have a standard you can implement on free or RAND terms. "Reasonable and non discriminatory (RAND) terms are typically published, and the same for everyone. It's clear that Forgent's claims are not RAND. $15 million doesn't sound like free to me, and Forgent is not publishing the terms of their licensing."
