The JPEG committee does not believe there is any foundation to Forgent's claim, which relates to US patent 4,698,672. In a posting on the JPEG site, committee member Richard Clarke said the committee has examined the claim "briefly", and believes the prior art exists in areas where the patent might overlap with the JPEG algorithm.

Clarke said that in response to this latest claim, in addition to the possibility of two similar claims from Philips and Lucent, the committee is to launch a new Web site to collect "a substantial repository of prior art and it invites submissions, particularly where the content may be applied to claims of intellectual property." The JPEG committee hopes to launch the Web site before its next meeting in Shanghai in October 2002.