Re: Question about Patents and MultiMedia
Jack here is a [link|http://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/Mitchell.html|link] to an old letter (1995) written by Joan Mitchell who worked for IBM. While I met her a few times, it was all well over a decade ago, so I have no idea how to contact her. In any case, I am quite forgettable and she would likely say "Who?".
The JPEG international committee tried hard to have early disclosure of patents. So far no one has pressed any claims on the JPEG baseline (sequential Huffman) system that I know of. I can not take responsibility for knowing the future however. I have not attended the JPEG meetings for nine months now so I am a bit out of date.
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The encoder certainly has proprietary things in it. But to the best of my knowledge, decoders would not be so likely to hit intellectual property.
She represented IBM on the JPEG committee and should know what she is talking about. I recall her saying that the JPEG standard actually covered some 28 compression schemes most of them never to be used in practice. She is one of two authors of
[link|http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books?id=2295501228595&pid=0442012721|JPEG: Still Image Compression Standard]. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993.
