[MW Forums]

The US patent office has overturned some, but not all, of the claims in Forgent Networks’ so-called JPEG patent. more

[leicaman]

So, people should drop jpeg like a hot potato. And NOT so they can go with Microsoft's proprietary image format that they want to force people to use so they can maintain Window's hegemony. JPEG2000 would be a good replacement. But even smarter would be for camera makers to adopt DNG as an alternative format for their own proprietary RAW formats. That way they could avoid jpeg suits and license fees. But people want smaller files, so JPEG2000 should become the standard ASAP, for smaller cameras and for quick workflows, to put an end to this nonsense. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[booga]

This doesn't look all that bad for Fogent. Preliminary rejections are not uncommon and appeals often re-instate the stricken claims. On the other hand, the decision to uphold most of the claims are probably not appealable.

[sigma8]

Why would they want to appeal the decisions that were made in their favor?

[jedi228]

In reply to:

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So, people should drop jpeg like a hot potato.

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Unfortunately standards are not easily changed. When I was a youngling my 3rd grade teacher taught us that the metric system was coming and that the English system feet and inches would be gone by the year 2000. Where is the metric system today? Even some highway signs that once became metric in the late 70's and early 80's have disappeared and reverted to pure English.
Nobody holds a patent on inches or centimeters. Basically, people don't change. JPEG isn't as entrenched as inches, but getting rid of it won't be easy. The problems aren't technical or legal--people just don't like change.

[booga]

In reply to:

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Why would they want to appeal the decisions that were made in their favor?

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Perhaps I should have been more clear. The Public Patent Foundation will not be able to appeal the review of the upheld claims, by my understanding. And most of the claims were upheld. On the other hand, Fogent can appeal the rejected claims and it's not uncommon for claims to be re-instated in that manner.

[booga]

In reply to:

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Nobody holds a patent on inches or centimeters. Basically, people don't change. JPEG isn't as entrenched as inches, but getting rid of it won't be easy. The problems aren't technical or legal--people just don't like change.

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The old internet "standard" was GIF, until Unisys pulled this trick and started enforcing a patent on it. JPEG was much better quality anyway, so people quickly moved. Then JPEG got blindsided by its own patent claim. PNG is only half the compression of JPEG, and JPEG2000 isn't supported by much, so there's really no good alternative if a content producer wants to publish something. I think the PNG folks did us a disservice there, but that's water under the bridge.
Unfortunately, it's looking like the new Microsoft standard may fit the bill better than anything else-- it'll get supported fairly quickly because it's backed by Microsoft, and it's higher quality with smaller file sizes. It's sad, but I expect it to take over as rapidly as JPEG drove GIF into oblivion.

[Steve_S]

In reply to:

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Unfortunately, it's looking like the new Microsoft standard may fit the bill better than anything else-- it'll get supported fairly quickly because it's backed by Microsoft, and it's higher quality with smaller file sizes. It's sad, but I expect it to take over as rapidly as JPEG drove GIF into oblivion.

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Unless Microsoft opens the format and makes it available royalty free, that's not likely to happen. People would more likely stick with jpeg and pay license fees to someone other than Microsoft. If the MS format isn't open, then it's dead in the water before it gets out the door. Cross platform is a requirement, even if 90% use Microsoft products. Necessity is the mother of invention. Just as the open source community created free work arounds for audio / mp3 (LAME encoder for MP3 format or something new like Ogg Vorbis) licensing, the same will likely happen with photos if licensing is forced upon existing users.
Steve

[IronChef3]

The problem with patents is they are written by lawyers.
Contrast and compare
Wiki on Jpeg - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG

the '672' Patent - http://patft.uspto.g...?patentnumber=4,698,672
The patent is unreadable by anyone that knows how JPEG works. Lawyers are arguing about the semantics of pure math written in lawyerese language.
I'm sure 2+2=4 could be patented 10 different ways.
For example -
"The patent is known as the 672 patent, an abbreviation of its U.S Patent No. 4,698,672. It describes a technique for compressing data by replacing strings of code that appear frequently with code strings of a shorter length. Forgent says the technique is employed in the JPEG format, used in digital cameras, printers and many other products."
Forgent might have the patent, but this is known as Huffman compression which was written about in 1952 by Huffman himself. It's not patentable in 1986.
So while the lawyers get rich real computer science suffers and does a collective head shaking.

[HumanJHawkins]

In reply to:

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PNG is only half the compression of JPEG, and JPEG2000 isn't supported by much, so there's really no good alternative if a content producer wants to publish something. I think the PNG folks did us a disservice there, but that's water under the bridge.

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PNG is a LOSSLESS format. It competes with GIF and TIF. However, because it is has so much better compression than either of those, some argue that it should also compete with JPG.
But you are comparing apples and oranges, and the PNG people did NOT do anyone a disservice. If anything, JPG has done the workls a disservice by letting people think they are storing photos for their grandchildren. But every time you rotate, crop, or perform the smallest of edits on a JPG, you are throwing away quality across the entire image.
What people are going to find with JPGs, is that 20 years out when they try to zoom in and see more detail, there won't be any detail to see because the average consumer doesn't understand what "LOSSY" means.

[jedi228]

In reply to:

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It's sad, but I expect it to take over as rapidly as JPEG drove GIF into oblivion.

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Unfortunately GIF is not completely gone into oblivion. (I wish it was) The browser you a looking at right now still supports GIF. If you have to write a browser (or email or graphics or presentation or just about any application) program today you still have to support GIF. Unpopular is not the same as gone. Unfortunately it still takes up space in your program and your lawyers will still have to research the issue everytime you create a new software product. It adds time to the development cycle and takes up space on your harddrive to have the capability. Even though very few people use it, GIF is still costing us.
I would hate to have JPEG become yet another vestigial organ that has to be supported for years to come. There are already many almost-dead formats that need to be supported for decades. Carrying dead weight is just inanely inefficient.

[iron_chef]

please get a more original handle, will ya?

[richcon]

JPEG didn't replace GIF, because the two are for entirely different sorts of images. JPEG is great for photographs, while GIF is designed for simple computer-generated images with lots of solid colors (like buttons or graphical text.) The image format that did replace GIF is PNG (open format, and better compression on the vast majority of images), but even so, most web sites have been very slow in transitioning to it.
PNG can't compare to JPEG. For (non-archival) photographs on the web, jpeg is far, far better than the "half" figure you quoted. For crisp line drawings, graphical text, and buttons, and where lossless is needed, PNG rocks JPEG.
Here's hoping that JPEG2000 replaces JPEG soon. Unfortunately, there's really only one thing that can catapult JPEG2000 to that level: if Microsoft decides to support it in Internet Explorer. But that would mean supporting an open standard, and not some new Windows-centric format that they come up with! (But, they still haven't fully supported PNG either. So I think I'll still be hoping be a long time.)

[IronChef3]

"please get a more original handle, will ya?"
I got the name from the Iron Chef series on the Food Network. Where did you get yours?