Just saw this on Paul Bissex’s blog: Burn all JPEGs?:

Some recent news is giving me flashbacks to 1995, when Unisys sprung their GIF patent surprise on the young World Wide Web. We got quite angry and some enterprising people even built a replacement for the beloved GIF.

Are we going there again? Forgent, a Texas company that “develops and licenses intellectual property and makes scheduling software” (it makes me feel dirty just to type that) is suing 40 companies, including Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo, for infringing on JPEG-related patent No. 4,698,672.

Sounds like patent trolling to me. Hopefully this will not become an issue (I imagine it will unite a big chunk of silicon valley to fight it if it does).