JPEG firm targets TiVo
p2pnet.net News:- "These days, everyone in the established commercial sector is suing everyone else, or thinking about it, and the latest to get in on the act is Compression Labs."
That was our intro back in April for a story on Forgent Networks which owns Compression Labs which in turn owns the patent on .jpg.
Compression Labs was suing a whole raft of companies – mostly Fortune 500 members – for infringing the patent.
Now, says Forbes here, it’s "escalating its strategy" by "demanding payment for a patent it says underlies the digital-recorder technology behind TiVo Inc." It’s also hired a law firm to "examine 40 additional patents".
Forgent, SCO and Acacia should start a club and call it Venal United.
"This is as much the class-action kind of lawyering you mostly hear conservatives criticizing, going after cases like asbestos litigation," EFF lawyer Jason Schultz is quoted as saying. "It’s just as much an opportunistic field for lawyers because the amount of money is so great."
Companies such as Forgent have "turned the patent system into an entrepreneurial venture instead of using it to defend the technology behind their products," he says in the Forbes story.
Schultz is running the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) interesting Ten Worst Patents campaign.
Named in Forgent ’s earlier get-rich-quick bid are:
Lined up as defendants are: Adobe Systems, Agfa Corporation, Apple Computer , Axis Communications Incorporated, Canon USA, Concord Camera Corporation , Creative Labs Incorporated, Dell Incorporated, Eastman Kodak Company, Fuji Photo Film Co USA, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Gateway Inc, Hewlett-Packard Company, International Business Machines Corp, JASC Software, JVC Americas Corporation, Kyocera Wireless Corporation, Macromedia Inc, Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, Oce’ North America Incorporated, Onkyo Corporation, PalmOne Inc, Panasonic Communications Corporation of America, Panasonic Mobile Communications Development Corporation of USA, Ricoh Corporation, Riverdeep Incorporated (d.b.a. Broderbund), Savin Corporation, Thomson SA, Toshiba Corporation and Xerox Corporation.
August 13th, 2004 at 11:48 pm
I hope they get their ass handed to them in a hand basket, and they get countersued to the point that they have to go bankrupt.