SeanAhern's Journal: JPEG Patent Could Impact the Gimp

I'm posting this story here so people can read it once it gets rejected from the main /. story submission queue. I give it 10 minutes to be rejected. Probably too many links. Update: Well, it's been 25 minutes. It is the weekend, after all. Update II: Accepted!!! I stand corrected, and amazed.

A number of years ago, Forgent acquired a patent on some of the algorithms required for JPEG compression and decompression, and recently sued 31 big-name IHVs and ISVs. A Newsforge article gets into some of the details and asks whether open source tools like the Gimp could be liable as well. To add fuel to the fire, the Joint Photographic Experts Group's committee thinks that some of the patent may be invalid. The p2pnet.net story mentions that the FTC has some skepticism as well. We originally talked about this on slashdot back in the summer of 2002.