A few years back, Unisys realized that it has the patent for the process that goes into creating GIF files, so it started hunting down companies what incorporated GIF technology and charging them royalties. They also made noises about “contributory infringement” from all GIF files.
The result, of course, was an influx of money for Unisys, some stunningly bad publicity for same, sites like Burn All GIFs being developed, and the introduction of the open source PNG format to replace it. The GIF format hasn’t gone away by any means, and the jury’s out on whether it was a swift move by Unisys, but we’ve gotten another (more efficient) graphic standard out of it.
Lo and behold, the same frelling thing seems to be happening with the JPG standard, where a company named Forgent is, after two decades of letting JPG become the preeminent file standard for photographic files, pressing its patent claims to the format, leading ISO to threaten that it will decommission JPG as an ISO standard.
The patent they are operating under expires in 2004, so most parties aren’t too concerned (though both Sony and some other unnamed hardware company have ponied up Big Bucks to Forgent over this). Still, given the ongoing wild (and ill-considered) flurries of patents issued in the US (and elsewhere), it’s all too easy for pretty much anything to be arguably based on protected intellectual property.
Bleah.
UPDATE: Natch, there’s now a Burn All JPEGs site.