About JPEG Patent
Forgent has decided to sue 31 companies for the use of a compression algorithm in JPEG, according to Wired News. JPEG could therefore have the same fate as GIF format – even though the GIF patent expired on GIF Liberation Day. Apparently, Forgent and Sony have come to a $16 million agreement: not to mention that prices will go up.
I don’t know how used is this algorithm in JPEG format, but think of all the programs as well as devices which use it: digital camera, image-manipulation software, web sites, etc. If Gimp were to drop JPEG as they had done for GIF, they wouldn’t be much left to it…
