THE ALLEGED JPEG PATENT

Here’s more information about Forgent’s claim that it has a patent on the .JPEG file format (see below). It’s not the first time that a company has waited until some technology has become ubiquitous and then popped up with a demand for royalties. The .GIF format went...

WATCH A COMPANY DESTROY ITSELF

This is fun. Forgent Networks, Inc., is attempting to ambush the digital imaging industry by claiming that it owns the software patent on JPEG compression technology. Forgent says it is “in contact” with computer, software, camera, and other digital imaging product...

MICROSOFT RESERVES RIGHT TO HACK YOUR COMPUTER

Here’s one of those things that might be trivial, or it might be enormously significant. There’s no way to be sure – but this is not a time when I have a very high opinion of the decisions made for us by big businesses. Microsoft included language in the license...

REPLAYTV SPYING ORDER OVERTURNED

A federal court overturned the order entered last month that required Sonicblue to write and install software to monitor what its customers were watching and report that information to the entertainment industry so they could scrutinize it for copyright violations....