In recent months, considerable interest has been expressed by the press and the public that the "baseline" of the JPEG standard (official name ITU-T T.81 | ISO/IEC 10918-1) may be subject to some patent claims.   The committee (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29/WG1 - JPEG/JBIG) has not been informed by ISO or ITU-T of any filing that has been received through the formal processes required by these parent organisations to JPEG, to register any such claim and state whether such a patent may be licensable under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.   Under the ISO Directives  that the committee works to, the JPEG committee would be expected to review any such claims received formally after publication of the standard to ensure that the standard can still be considered valid.

The JPEG committee would like to re-affirm that it has always been a goal that its standards should be implementable in their "baseline" form free of royalty and license fees.  As already stated in a previous press release, and on other occasions, considerable time has been spent to arrange licensing on these terms, where relevant, and to ensure that in accordance with the ISO Directives clause 2.14 (see below), patented technology is only used in exceptional circumstances within the standards for which the committee is responsible.   Since the formation of the predecessor to JPEG, ISO TC97/SC2 WG8 in 1982, many hundreds of companies, organisations and universities have this work, and their careful attention to this detail is gratefully acknowledged.

The new JPEG 2000 baseline standard (ITU-T T.800 | ISO/IEC 15444-1) has also been prepared on this basis, and currently over 20 organisations, holding many patents in this area, have agreed to allow licensed use of their patents and other intellectual property in connection with baseline implementations of this standard free of license fees or royalty fees.

The committee has considered the situation in more detail at its recent (October 2002) Shanghai meeting.  ISO, in its Patent Policy, takes no position concerning the evidence, validity and scope of any patent rights claimed, nor regards itself as responsible for identifying such rights.  

Further information on the Historical Archive.
 
Background to the JPEG stance on patents.

Reviewed and approved at the 28th ISO/IEC JTC/SC29/WG1 Meeting of JPEG, Shanghai, October 25, 2002.