Sue Your Way to Profit, it's the American Way!
Over at
Dean's World he
has a mention about
Patent Trolling companies and how utterly ridiculous this
sort of thing is. I can't agree with him more. What we have here is a
company who's primary purpose is to gather a huge patent portfolio and then
bring infringement suits against other companies. They to this not to protect
their rights, but for profit.
The company in this case is Forgent, who owns the patent on the JPEG image
format.
Forgent's biggest earner -- generating $108.4 million in settlements and
licensing fees in the past three years -- has been U.S. Patent No. 4,698,672,
issued in 1987 and obtained years ago in an acquisition. At the heart of the
so-called 672 parent is something ubiquitous in the technology world: the JPEG
format for digital pictures.
In particular, what struck me is that the CEO believes that doing this is the
American way. So, the American way is to look for something that is owned by
a company that doesn't care to enforce it's patent, make sure that what is
patented is so common that almost everyone uses is, then acquire that patent and
demand money for "infringement"? This kind of reminds me of the
Rambus Law Suit.
At least the JPEG patent should expire soon.