On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 07:14:49PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 11:30:55AM -0400, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: > > "Forgent Networks said Friday it sued 31 major hardware and software > > vendors, including Dell and Apple Computers, for allegedly infringing > > on its claim to an algorithm used in the popular JPEG picture file > > format." > > <http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63200,00.html? > > tw=wn_bizhead_1> > > > > They've started suing. Is JPEG any different than GIF was, especially > > if this whole mess is settled out of court or worse won by the > > plaintiff? > > Their patent expires *really* soon, like, a few months away. It's > likely that the issue will become moot. It has been speculated that this will trigger a defense based on the principle of laches, which is the civil-law counterpart to a statute of limitations. It's a way of pointing out in terms of a legal defense how mighty *convenient* it is for a patent holder to wait until 6 months before the termination of a 20-year patent term to sue anyone for infringement. It's interesting that political conservatives in the U.S., normally so hostile to civil plaintiffs, seem to find laches disgusting. Probably because a submarine patent is a means of collecting corporate welfare, which is a very "conservative" thing to do. -- G. Branden Robinson | The errors of great men are Debian GNU/Linux | venerable because they are more branden@debian.org | fruitful than the truths of little http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | men. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
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