USPTO will re-examine Forgent's claim on JPEG patent

The Associated Press is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office has announced it will re-examine the viability of Forgent Networks’ assertion of key image compression patents. For the past few years, Forgent has been claiming it holds patent rights to some key compression technologies used in JPEG formats.

The request for re-examining the validity of the patent was filed in November by the Public Patent Foundation Inc.

The New York-based not-for-profit called Forgent’s practice of reaping millions of dollars from companies who use the JPEG format a "campaign of harassment" that is causing "significant public harm by threatening the JPEG standard on which the public relies."

(AP via MyWay)