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[jitspoe]

So this company conveniently recognizes that one of its ancient patents happens to cover some portion of the compression algorithm used in JPEG compression now that JPEG has become, you know, THE standard pretty much everywhere.  Over the past couple of years, they've been going on a suing rampage and forcing people to license the patent, making millions.  Now they're hitting up Microsoft, and Microsoft is like, "Sue you!  We're not paying for that!"  I wonder how it will turn out.

http://news.com.com/Graphics+patent+suit+fires+back+at+Microsoft/2100-1025_3-5681112.html?tag=nefd.top

You really shouldn't be allowed to do that.  I mean -- wait til everybody starts using something THEN enforce your patent.  I can understand if it was just one company using it somewhere and they didn't realize it for a few years, but JPEG?  For crying out loud.  EVERYBODY uses JPEG.

[Supermercado]

No kidding. That's ridiculous. It'd be like someone crying foul that they had a patent on some little transistor on the Pentium processor 10 years after it came out and now wanting to make gazillions of dollars off all the computers that have been made since then using that processor. Foolishness.

I'm not a huge MS fan but I hope they win this legal battle. This is stupid.

[elmono311]

That's friggin ridiculous. I would have thought the patent would have run out by now, though. There's no way someone can just decide all of a sudden to make people license the format, especially with how long its been around and how much in use it is

I really hate people. Because of the Canadians and their damn snow, I've been in a pretty foul mood lately and really hate people right now.

[Catfish]

People are idiots.  Plain and simple.