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December 15, 2005
Yahoo! Licenses JPEG Patent
Walking
away from further litigation with a lighter wallet, Yahoo! is inking a patent
licensing agreement with Forgent Networks over the notorious JPEG patent (4,698,672),
which has raked in $105 million in licensing fees.
In its three-year licensing campaign, Forgent has or is suing practically everyone using JPEG. Over 50 companies so far have signed on rather than fight on, though some heavies, including IBM, Dell, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Eastman-Kodak, and Google, are still under the gun. The patent expires next year.
Posted by Patent Hawk at December 15, 2005 1:26 PM | Litigation