On Apr 26, 2004, at 18:41, Florian Weimer wrote:
Anthony DeRobertis <asd@suespammers.org> writes:Is JPEG any different than GIF wasI don't remember that anyone was actually sued for using the LZW compression algorithm (certainly not a company rather close to Debian). Maybe the case was so clear that every paid royalties. In this case, it could be a good sign that this is taken to the courts.
If Apple, et. al. decide to actually fight the patent in court, then I think we could wait until the outcome of the case. Obviously, if Forgent wins, we'd have to act quickly then.
OTOH, if this is settled out of court (I suspect it will be) then what should we do? I think we would lose a noticeable portion of our distribution --- and a good deal of the functionality --- if we dropped every program that touches JPEG. It's not like there is an alternative, like PNG was for GIF, either (at least I don't know of another photographic image format).
The JPEG group thinks there is prior art; hopefully the 30 defendants decide to argue so in court.