In the suit, filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Forgent contends that it deserves royalties from the hardware, software and electronics makers, based on its patent holdings covering the compression technology behind JPEG. The format is one of the most popular methods for compressing and sharing images on the Internet.
Forgent, which makes scheduling software, filed the suit through its Compression Labs subsidiary against a who's who of the hardware business, including Apple Computer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, along with a slew of well-known electronics manufacturers such as Canon, Creative Labs, JVC and Xerox. Several software makers were also named in the suit, including Adobe Systems and Macromedia.
According to Forgent representatives, the company previously attempted to strike licensing deals with all of the vendors named in the suit, but felt the process had reached a dead end.
"We've been pursuing negotiations for over a year, but that effort was no longer moving forward," said Michael Noonan, a company spokesman. "Litigation was a last resort, and unfortunate, but necessary."
Forgent has engaged in an aggressive pursuit of royalties related to JPEG since first announcing its claim to the patents in July 2002. In February 2003, the software maker won a $16m licensing agreement from Sony based on the holdings, US Patent No. 4,698,672. The company claims it has generated over $90m (£50.9m) in licensing fees related to the patent over the last two years. Noonan said that one of the companies from which Forgent was created, Vtel, had earlier purchased the patent rights, which were granted in 1987.
The claim to the JPEG standard has long irked the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) committee, which has worked to create standards related to the file format since it was devised in 1986. When the company first staked its claim to JPEG, the committee denounced attempts to derive fees from the standard and expressed disappointment at Forgent's attempts to do so. The UK-based group could not immediately be reached for comment on the latest suit.
The actual patent held by Forgent relates to digital image compression, and fields of use include any device, such as digital cameras, used to compress, store, manipulate, print or transmit digital still images. Forgent also believes its patent rights extend beyond digital cameras to include other devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular phones, printers and scanners.
"We believe we will prevail in this litigation as the '672 Patent is valid, enforceable and infringed," Richard Snyder, chief executive of Forgent, said in a statement. "It's unfortunate that despite the many opportunities these companies have had to license the patent, they have all declined to participate, leaving us no alternative but to litigate."
