Forgent Shakedown Continues
Posted by Mark Nelson on 27th September 2005 | Permanent Link
Forgent Networks is already well known among digital camera manufacturers for their continuing demands for license fees on their ‘672 compression patent. Since Forgent doesn’t make money producing anything useful, the only way to expand their business is to go after additional victims. Apparenty they have decided that compression of video images constitutes infringement as well.
One tactic that litigants often try is to shoot down some small fish before going after bigger game. This announcement that they’ve settled with Axis Communications might be an indicator that this strategy is in play in the video arena.
The patent in question is from a pretty respectable source, but it hardly constitutes groundbreaking work, and it really doesn’t seem to have much to do with JPEG compression. Unfortunately for most of us, a jury in Detroit disagreed, and hit Sony up for a $25M judgement for infringement on this patent. Forgent has been cashing settlement checks ever since, and it looks like Axis will be writing one more.
September 27th, 2005 at 11:36 am
The patent relates to a computer-controlled video system allowing playback during recording. During playback, the system reads the video content from its storage component.
An older story with some more details:
Forgent Strikes Again: with patent for digital video recording
http://www.c10n.info/archives/78
September 30th, 2005 at 7:08 am
Forgent needs to take a hint from SCO and just die already.
September 30th, 2005 at 12:46 pm
[...] ichard says that its growth, one can still wonder if falling revenue is the reason for the recent crackdown on small fish companies. Forgent employs 19 people in Austin (any guesses for how many of the [...]