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Apple Patent Blocking PNG Development
Daniel writes: "Apple has a patent (U.S. Patent No. 5,379,129) on compositing a source and destination image using a mask image. This patent appears to read on alpha channel transparency, which the PNG and MNG file formats use. APPLE has declared in their patent statement to the Scalable Vector Graphics Working Group that their patent is only available for RAND Licensing. Since this patent appears to read on the PNG file format, Apple is hampering work on the PNG and MNG file formats.
Perhaps Apple would like to clarify this situation by explicitly stating that this patent does not cover the PNG and MNG file formats or by RF Licensing their patent to the PNG and MNG development groups.
Alternatively, the PNG and MNG developers are asking people to submit prior art in order to invalidate Apple's patent. SGI in particular appears to have prior art with their 'blendfunction.' Make sure the prior art you submit is older than May 08, 1992, the filing date of Apple's patent."
Apple introduced a function called "CopyDeepMask" into their API in ... I'm not sure ... certainly by System 7, maybe by 6. I'm pretty sure I was looking at that call in 1991, and maybe even 1990. Is 1992 the filing date, or the date they claim invention? Does it matter it pattent law?
For some non-Apple prior art, when was the first version of Photoshop released? Alpha compositing is its bread and butter, and I'm pretty sure even the earliest versions let you turn an image into a selection.
Now that I've finally weaned myself completely away from the GIF file format, PNG is having patent problems. Let's add another line to "Software Patents are bad, M'kay?"
From what I understand, this patent tries to over-broadly apply to all in-file 'Alpha-channel' blending techniques.
My suggestion is to create an open-patent free protocol that replaces one file transparency with two-file transparency. IE, one file is the base image, and the second file acts as a transparency mask. Since it uses two files, this technique should be free and clear of the Apple patent, right?
An HTML tage for something like this would read something like
< img src="file.jpg" mask="mask.jpg" >
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
You know how, when you type the last character that'll fit on the last line in a text window, the top line disappears, all the other lines move up one, and the cursor appears in the first position of a new blank line?
IBM has a patent on that.
the hypocrisy around here getting irritating. Since it was apple doing it, they are asked to explain their actions. Anyone else (read microsoft) would do something like this, there would be outrage.
So, is Apple going to go after the Photoshop or Gimp people ? that would really make them look like an ass ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
- They are a company; their business is making money, not being cool (except to the extend that being cool helps business).
- They are publicly traded, so they have a legal obligation to their stockholders to do their best to make money, even at the expense of being cool.
- Making money means pursuing every strategy available to them to its fullest extent, and taking advantage of whatever the law, the world, and circumstance gives them.
- Sometimes this means doing cool things, like open-sourcing the core of their new OS.
- Sometimes the means doing crappy things, like abusing an overinflated body of intellectual property law.
Of course, if they really do put the brakes on PNG (and let's wait to hear all sides of the story), and if that hurts their business (e.g. it hurts their good standing with their customers and developers), they won't do it. So maybe sending them a polite but firm e-mail asking for an explanation isn't a bad idea.Has Apple actually made any threats on this, or did someone just find this statement and see it as a possible precursor to a threat?
PNG has been around for a while now, and Apple has never(AFAIK) said anything about it in the past. I really don't see how this changes anything.
Now we're gonna get all these slashbots telling us how Apple is evil and everyone should boycott OS X/Darwin because of this, when they really haven't done anything. Chicken Little ought not be the standard tone of every Slashdot story.
Try Porter and Duff's paper published in 1984 introducing image composition that started it all!!!!
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
As far as I know, BSD was already open in various incarnations. But the next time I build a proprietary layer above an open source project, I'll hire you for marketing so I can claim I was the one that made the core open source in the first place!
Every program that combines images and works with true color uses this. It is impossible not to, the algorithim is totally obvious. True color images (ie where the numbers represent levels of red, green, blue, rather than be indexes into a color pallette) were in common use in advanced visualization and simulations in 1980, such as Evans & Sutherland flight simulators. I also saw photo touch-up software that could duplicate a portion of the image and put it somewhere else in 1979, and I believe it must have used this, as otherwise the edges of the cut piece would be visible.
PORT84, Porter, T., and T.Duff, "Compositing Digital Images," SIGGRAPH 84, 253-259.
This is the paper most-often cited, however I think it's main addition is the enumeration of compositing operators and the introduction of "premultiplied" images. Before that I believe non-premultiplied was used as that was the more obvious solution. Also PNG does not use premulitplication.
Even if Apple is going to be a pita about this, it does not affect PNG, as the file format itself does not do any compositing, it just stores a 4th "color" called the alpha. So I would not worry about it there. However Photoshop and Gimp and the in-house program I write for Digital Domain uses this, and about six thousand other pieces of commercial and free software.
Well, I took a look at their patent, and it really seems like they did patent alpha-blending. Obviously they never should have been granted such an obvious patent.
However, unless anyone has any evidence to the contrary, I'm going to assume that Apple only filed this as a defensive patent, and never intends to sue anyone because they make use of this idea.
I'm also pretty sure (but can't find evidence) that SGI's "Haeberli" image format dates back to the late 1980's - that format has a full alpha channel.
I certainly designed hardware that would render textured polygons composited by alpha blends back in the late 1980's. I have screen shots taken from that system.
(Notice the alpha textured trees in the righthand image - those are 'composited via a mask').
Earlier than that, the Quantel Paintbox (used in TV studio's to produce 2D artwork) had some kind of alpha-based compositing feature.
This patent would have had to be filed in about 1978 to have avoided all prior art - and even then, it would have been considered 'trivial' IMHO.
Who honestly believes Apple would try to milk this almost certainly invalid patent? What do they gain by going after PNG? I think everyone will agree that web standards help Apple, and they are not going to do something against their best interest.
And what is up with /. posting stories about months-old facts with no new developments anyways? I think it is good for /. to bring this issue up and get Apple to clarify their position, but listen to the report: "APPLE has declared in their patent statement to the Scalable Vector Graphics Working Group that their patent is only available for RAND Licensing." They make it sound like it just happened! And while I'm complaining, why is "Apple" in all caps ;)
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
I think this leaves only two possible conclusions: either Apple's legal staff and the inventors, Konstantin Othmer and Bruce Leak, are completely incompetent, or the inventors deliberately tried to patent a technique they knew to be in wide use and Apple's legal staff is deliberately trying to enforce an invalid patent. Apple didn't even have the smarts to offer this patent for "royalty free" licensing to SVG.
Forget about any of Apple's claims of openness: this is such a clear case of patent abuse that it can't be an accident or mistake. The open source community would do well to stonewall Apple: don't incorporate OSX-related patches into open source projects, don't port to their hardware, and don't buy their products.
Before anyone goes off the deep end, I would like to know if Apple is intending on using this to block development on PNG, or if they are holding the patent but don't plan on interfering. Has there been a statement made by Apple that they are blocking the use of the PNG format or the SVG 1.0 patent?
Holding a patent is one thing, vigorously going after people who use the patented technology is another. I'm not up on my legalese but I do see that Apple provides a RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms) license for the use of the technology. I'm not sure what the implications are, but it does look as if Apple is making an attempt to accommodate the SVG 1.0 patent.
If people think that Apple's terms, or the terms of any of the 11 other patent holders involved, are too strict then I'd say your best bet is to write a nice letter to Apple explaining why you think so. Apple holds a lot of patents and, from what I've seen so far, are fairly reasonable about opening them up. Of course they still want to hold on to their intellectual property, but they have opened up patents in the past for reasonable use.
Sapere aude!
CLick the "Image" button to see the lovely diagrams. There are a few items this patent does NOT cover, as explicitely mentioned in the text. This patent does not cover additional channel information, like alpha channels. It only covers a seperate, full color, mask image that is used to mask off the source image.
I have a few questions:
If the patent does not cover greyscale images, then not all sanity is lost!
-B
From the Second Edition of "Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics", by William M. Newman published by McGraw-Hill in 1979:
:= ColorRaster.ymin to ColorRaster.ymax - 1 do
:= ColorRaster.xmin to ColorRaster.xmax - 1 do
We find on page 222 the pseudocode for the WriteColor procedure:
procedure WriteColor(var ColorRaster: raster; x, y: integer);
var i, j: integer;
begin
for j
for i
if GetPixel(ColorRaster, i, j) <> transparent then
SetPixel(FrameBuffer, x+i, y+j, GetPixel(ColorRaster, i, j))
end;
And there was a First Edition published in 1973, for all I know it's in there too.
BTW, there isn't anything Bill Atkinson did for Apple in QuickDraw that isn't spelled out in this book.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The definitive reference on the history of alpha is Alvy Ray Smith's technical memo from 1995. It seems pretty clear that he co-invented the technique with Ed Catmull as a solution to a problem that Catmull was having with his sub-pixel hidden surface algorithm.
The earliest dated documentation on his alpha channel code is January 13, 1978, although it was probably written the previous December. See footnote 4, page 6 of the memo for details.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Apple Advertises '1-click' licensing. goes more toward proving amazon.com suckered them than showing evil on their part, and on Apple sues to stop leaks. I emphatically support their action, although you probably didn't get the complete story unless you read some real news on it. Apple tracked down and stopped a leak in their R&D division. He was trying to be harmless, releasing roadmaps and product details to Mac rumor sites, but his actions certainly gave Apple a huge disadvantage and lost them money. All they did was get him to agree to stop, even though they certainly could have won monetary damages. How can you oppose that?
"...a lot of us contribute to Apple. Hint. Stop posting Apple press releases on slashdot. :)" Oh yes, Apple would be davasted if /. stopped doing mostly misinformed and negative reports on their products. "Think different. Indeed!" Interesting since half your complaints had to do with people "Thinking Same." "Apple couldn't build their own OS so they use choose *BSD to gain market share." Apple can't make their own OS, eh? Actually they scrapped years of work to go with the BSD core, and they managed to put an interface on it better by orders of magnitude than anything yet available for an OSS OS, not to bash OSS OSs of course, just saying UI and setup is their big weak point in the desktop world currently. But I'm pretty sure everyone already realizes that "Apple couldn't build their own OS" was a troll.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
You seen to forget:
HP, Apple Drop Support for Royalties on Web Standards
Don't you think that is HELPFUL?
I personally think it's rather odd they would state they do not support RAND, then say you have to use RAND for this standard... something is wrong here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Also think of the confussion it causes when two products look identical. It should let the opensource community do this and not allow companies to do it? What's the insentive?
As for the one-click thing, please. They debuted one-click, so what. They are using, or at least were, using a technology. Don't pick on their website just 'cause they licensed a technology from another company that has a patent on it. What's cheaper, lisencing or going to court? Pick on Amazon for creating such a stupid patent.
And as for the cube-NDA contract issue, please. Gimme a friggin' break. So what if Apple likes to hide their new products until they are ready to do it the way they want. The employee signed a contract that he won't leak information from Apple. What if a competitor such as Dell caught wind and released something just as cool, but earlier. Great, Apple would get shafted 'cause of some ass employee who can't play nice.
As for the BSD crack you made, they are using opensource software and giving back the modified version, Darwin for free. Don't be an ingrate and say "Well, a patent (mind you invalid) exists, they get people to stop mimicing their interface verbatim, use OSS and recontribute while making their OS even more stable than before, so apple reeks." statement. Maybe we should step all over Apple and hack QuickTime, which uses a kick ass codec and try our best to drive the company into the ground.
You've just spread extreemist FUD about a company protecting its rights. piss me off...
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Actually there are ways to get lossy compression out of both PNG and GIF. It's not built into the format itself though. It's a fairly simple matter for an application to rearrange the pixels in your image a bit so that they compress better (for example, swapping two pixels in GIF so that like colors are next to each other.) The image loses quality; the file size gets smaller. Lossy compression doesn't need to have anything to do with the format itself, but rather that format's ability to be smaller in size given loss of quality.
> It seems un-American, bordering on the Communist to suggest that Apple should simply give away their intellectual property.
Ignoring the whole "give away" and "intellectual property" parts of it, I'll point out that they aren't being asked to give away anything. They're being asked to stop trying to take something that doesn't belong to them. The idea was not their's, nor was it or its use exclusive to them. The purpose of patents was to encourage ideas, not direct money to big buisness who can afford to file dozens of supirious patents.
If one even assumed this was true....
So what, really? PNG was supposed to replace GIF because (Unisys?) was going to uphold patents on GIF, but... never happened because it all blew over.
Has anyone even seen a PNG file online? I think I ran across a grand total of 1. Of course there could have been inline graphics that I didn't notice, but really?
And IF Apple tried to enforce this, and PNG was widely used, what would they do? Get on Google and start at website 1 and go through 2,000,000 sequentially?
Methinks that someone is blowing this out of proportion while misreading in the first place.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I'm an Apple shareholder, and one fine day on the shitter I was reading their 10-K (annual SEC filing), and noticed this interesting quote on page 6, under "PATENTS, TRADEMARKS, COPYRIGHTS AND LICENSES":
I thought that was an interesting thing to write, I wonder what, say, Amazon or Microsoft say in their filings about patents?
If anything comes of this patent (I doubt anything will, despite the sensationalist /. headline), you can use that in your letters to Apple or something.
You know the funny thing. Porter and Duff still work for Pixar and share the same CEO as Apple...
I think the Porter/Duff paper is the last word on compositing.
jeff
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/ is the page on the W3C's site on the subject.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I think it's worth pointing out, that Apple inherited compositing code from NeXT that deals with rather more than simply blending transparent colors.
In the Cocoa framework, the NSImage compositing modes include:
typedef enum _NSCompositingOperation {
NSCompositeClear = 0,
NSCompositeCopy = 1,
NSCompositeSourceOver = 2,
NSCompositeSourceIn = 3,
NSCompositeSourceOut = 4,
NSCompositeSourceAtop = 5,
NSCompositeDestinationOver = 6,
NSCompositeDestinationIn = 7,
NSCompositeDestinationOut = 8,
NSCompositeDestinationAtop = 9,
NSCompositeXOR = 10,
NSCompositePlusDarker = 11,
NSCompositeHighlight = 12,
NSCompositePlusLighter = 13
} NSCompositingOperation;
As you can see, that's more than color blending. I don't know if the PNG spec deals with more than one of these modes.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You would think so, yet here we are. This is the crux of the current distaste for many patents.
The Constitutional purpose of patents is not to make money but to promote progress in science and the useful arts. Patenting the trivial or obvious or patenting prior art (this one seems to include both cases) is detrimental to progress in science or any other field.
Patenting things which are prior art is also detrimental to capitalism, since it increases the risk of lawsuits if not actual damages and limits genuine innovation. *Bogus* patents are antithetical to "making money" in both the short and long term, unless you're a lawyer. They're no different than the mob's "protection" rackets.
I posted this before as AC, but since it didn't get any points, I thought no one would see it, and I _do_ think it might help.
Actually, Alvy Ray Smith with Ed Catmull created an alpha compositing system in 1978 while Ed Catmull was doing a paper for SIGGRAPH '78.
He states this in his paper "Alpha and the History of Digital Compositing" in August 1995.
He says that his earliest dated documentation he has for that code is dated January 13, 1978. He specifically showed compositing an alpha image on a background which should just be like another image. I hope this helps
Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!
is truly an American:
It seems un-American, bordering on the Communist to suggest that Apple should simply give away their intellectual property.
<aside> What the do you mean, exactly, by "un-American" -- "doubleplus ungood"? or is it closer to "un-Italian"?
Were Helen Keller and Jack London un-American because they were socialists? </aside>
Did you ever stop to think that patents are a way for companies to avoid competition? To keep out the little guy?
Many companies have decided that instead of competing on price and quality, they would rather go to the govt. and get an exclusive monopoly to use a certain technology. Because the pace of change in the tech field is so rapid, patents are effectively eternal. And when people criticize this, because they want to see competing products in the marketplace, you call them communists?
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
from the W3C Patent statement summary:
...
[snip]
Apple informed the SVG 1.0 Working Group very early in the SVG 1.0 process of the patent they listed in their license statement. The SVG Working Group made a concerted effort to produce a specification that does not require implementors to infringe the patent.
[snip]
Member Name -/-Patent Claim -/- License
Adobe -- None -- Royalty-Free --
Apple -- Patent: US 5379129 -- RAND --
uh, you are aware that this story is about Apple, and not Adobe, right?
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Do you think the Commodore 64's sprite handling is prior enough? The idea was the same. And it was released MUCH before 1992.
... software/hardware patents should be reconsidered. Maybe just a year would be enough? Maybe not even at all? The industry is wasting a lot of effort on trying to find out a way of doing things almost the same way as someone else, as to not hit any patents. This is way way stupid if you ask me.
As other posters have mentioned:
1) This is obvious.
2) There is prior art.
So even if Apple decided to try and enforce it, it'd get shot down however:
3) Apple has already allowed royalty free use of this patent.
Seriously folks, this story is just silly. Think for a moment how many things out there use multi level alpha transparency. All 3d cards from the Voodoo on do, Windows does in movie file formats and in the UI in XP, a bunch of X WMs do. If Apple tried to enforce this they'd have legal teams from all over after them, fact aside that they've already said they won't.
Just because a company has a stupid patent doesn't mean they will try and enforce it.
7. A method as in claim 1 wherein said method produces anti-aliased text in said destination image by performing the method with the
source image being a pattern and the mask image being anti-aliased text.
(Claim 1 is the basic alpha-transparency concept).
Suppose that someone comes up with prior art that invalidates claim 1. Apple can still claim rights over the use of this technique for anti-aliased text unless someone can show prior art which covers that specific application. So don't just look for prior descriptions of alpha-transparency: look for prior use of alpha transparency for text, and anything else in the claims.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Have we already forgot the GIF fiasco?
It was well known that de-facto standard for file compression in the net, "compress", was covered by the Unisys compression patent. However, showed no interest in enforcing the patent outside hardware (modems and the like), and would informally tell people who asked that.
Nonetheless the FSF insisted on having a patent free compression format for use by GNU, and eventually settled on gzip. This made some people angry, it was annoying to have to deal with a new compression format, and they claimed the FSF was seeing ghosts and that Unisys would never change their policy.
However, as we all know, Unisys *did* change their policy, allthough the target wasn't compress (which meanwhile had lost most of its markedshare to gzip), but GIF which used the same algorithm internally, and had become a big thing thanks to the WWW. Thankfully, at that time we had gzip, and could create PNG fast using the same code.
The morale "they haven't enforced the patent yet" provide false security. Companies don't enforce software patents until it become economically profitable to do so, typically when the algorithm is in so common use that it will be expensive to switch to an alternative. What we need is a legally binding promise not to enforce the patent.
System and method for analyzing web-server log files
A method for analyzing traffic data generated by a plurality of web servers, which host a single web site. The site is mirrored on each server. A traffic data hit is generated responsive to each access of one of the servers. The hit includes data representing the time of the access. Each data hit is stored in a log file on the server accessed. The first-stored data hit is read from each server. Each of the read data hits are compared, and the oldest data hit is passed to a log file analyzer. The next-stored data hit is read from the server from which the passed data hit was read, and a second comparison is performed on the read data hits, with the oldest data hit being passed to the log file analyzer. This process continues until all of the data hits are read, compared, and passed to the log file analyzer. This results in passing all of the data hits to the log file analyzer in the chronological order in which the hits were generated.
As a publicly ownable company, they have an obligation to do whatever their shareholders tell them. Usually this is "make money", but it could be anything and is decided on by the democratically elected boards of the company. Members of the board are extremely responsive to the needs of larger blocks of shareholders. In fact, I've seen some pretty interesting wrangling over how board voting works and stuff like that, just because the board holds a lot of real power in a corporation.
A better interpretation of the profit motive would be that Apple has an obligation to pay its employees for their efforts. It can only do this if it continues to operate at least at the break-even point.
Frankly, this sort of patent messiness is just another X in my "con" column when it comes to Apple. And when their major "pro" at this point is "fanless computers", they just don't stack up well against a lot of other manufacturers.
I do not have a signature
The patent only applies to triple alpha channels, i.e., where the alpha channel is itself an RGB value, and the source and destination images are blended channel by channel according to the RGB values in the triple alpha channel.
It seems like an obvious extension of alpha blending (which was around for a while and is referenced in the patent) but that didn't stop Apple. HURR! WE R SMRT!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
How about using a bloody stencil to paint block letters on the side of a stupid truck?
This is so irritating. Some obvious technique gets applied with computers, and all of a sudden some arrogant stuck up company gets a patent on it and starts throwing their weight around to stop open standard development. It makes me sick.
Honestly, the day somebody gets a computer to pick their nose, a company's going to have a patent on it and try to make money off of it.
-Rob
Apple have to maximize the shareholder value or the directors might go to jail
Hahahahahhahah! So now, instead of putting directors and officers in jail for legitimate legal transgressions, environmental damage, collusion, union-busting, bribery, corruption and the like, which people have been demanding. Instead the slugs in the corporate offices hide behind SantaClaraCounty vs. Southern Pacific Railroad , officer non-liability, and various other bits of ill-logic, but NOW you suggest that unless they push the moral bounds of the purpose of patents, that they rob from the community that empowers them, that unless they transgress against the public domain and the intellectual pursuits of a free community - that they WOULD GOTO JAIL!
What a sad fucking statement that is. If that is true, which I accept, probably is; that if it is true, you Yankees need to do some serious re-thinking about the methods to which you organize your goddamned affairs.
Why should any company have the law enforcement backed authority to shakedown individuals for cash for any concept or idea? Don't tell me the founding fathers of the US thought it was a good idea. All of them did not.
Running around like squirrels looking for prior art whenever the specter of an intellectual monopoly threatens the free and open use of a key technology is missing the real point here.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Patents are granted by the patent office. They are not Valid until tested in a law court. It is not the patent office's job to determine whether there is prior art.
While I'm not questioning that this is how it works, I think it should not work this way. Going to court is expensive. And, more often than not in cases like this, it's having the better and higher paid lawyer that decides who wins, not being right. So the deck is immediately stacked against open standard development projects such as PNG. Unless they can enlist rich and powerful allies, they're hosed. Apple's got the muscle and the lawyers to force compliance because the mere threat of going to court, and the resultant expense and hassle, is a very big stick, even if Apple doesn't have a chance of winning the case.
The civil law system we have in place right now is very easily used by bullies for bullying. And that sucks.
-Rob
This is a bit OT, but..
In order for the USPTO to start being usefull again, why dont they use the public to gather prior art?
Couldnt a website, shit even slashcode based, be set up that discloses patent applications (which are public-knowledge anyway) in order to allow the public to AID the EXAMINER in collecting prior art? Somewhere in the examination period should a 'peer-review' element be 'created' (or exercised) in this way.
let the public see the patent application (disclose the applicant or not, its kinda irrelevant) and allow "all those reasonably versed in the art" to aid the Examiner. If the applicant disagrees with the examiner, let the APPLICANT take the isssue to court in order to SECURE his patent - dont allow the system to default in building a club to be held over the heads of others.
I am not a supporter of "intellectual-property" in general, I see the free exchange of ideas in an open society of greater value to the community (than allowing ideas to be controlled by profit-seekers), but I digress, I think i might come to terms with the actions of the USPTO if they implemented a system such as this..
And, Unisys is bullying. You know, I thought I'd convert some of my PNGs to GIFs before people started complaining. But they went after the people writing convert, so I couldn't. But nobody has complained, so I don't care about GIFs.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Alpha compositing is dead obvious to even the most naive thinker
This argument is raised every time there is a patent dispute discussed on slashdot yet I'm always a little uncomfortable with it. We say something is "obvious" but we say so many years after it was invented (perhaps) and patented; years during which we have used it and become familiar with the concept. Was it really obvious when it was developed and patented or has it only become "obvious" because of it's subsequent widespread use and our consequent familialarity with the concepts involved?
In this particular case I suspect that the concept was indeed obvious by 1992 when the patent was issued - that seems pretty late in the game for such a basic concept in computer graphics. If it was obvious it won't be hard to find prior art. But in general we should recognise that concepts that are obvious to us now after long use were often breakthrough innovations obvious to no one when they were first developed.
The irony. :P
Alpha blending is directly contrasted to their method in the patent itself. This is no threat to the patent-free status of PNG or MNG.
Now this leads to the ongoing quandry of patent law that nobody seems to have a good solution for. Let us assume for the moment that we have iron clad evidence of prior art, the only way to overturn the patent is a court challenge. Court challenges cost money.
Big corporartions won't challenge a patent in court because there's a huge financial disincentive to do it. They could spend years in court and blow tons of money and still possibly lose. On the other hand, the patent holder will license the patent to them for a less exhorbitant sum. If Adobe had to pay to license PNG from Apple, they'd just pay the fee and pass the extra cost directly to the consumer and not bat an eye.
The people who have the most to gain from challenging patents are small ISV's because they can hardly afford to be dumping limited resources into royalties. That problem is made even more complicated when you are talking about open source development. Of course they can neither afford royalty payments nor the court costs and time necessary to fight the patent. If a patent is going to expire in 4 or 5 years, why bother fighting because by the time you get through the courts it won't matter anymore.
The end result of this is that innovation by small software vendors and open source developers is totally crippled by patents. Whether a patent is for a legitimate innovation or not is irrelevant to these groups because as soon as it gets approved and somebody demonstrates a willingness to enforce it, it becomes off limits to these groups.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
One of the most recognizable signors of the Declaration of Independence comes to mind: Benjamin Franklin. He was 100% against the slippery notion of intellectual monopoly.
This opinion coming from a man that was not only a patriot and intellectual; he was also an inventor.
His rational voice, and that of others that shared his opinion, was not enough to at the time and thus we have article 1, section 8.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
I didn't know you guys let Craig Mundie have a Slashdot account!
Besides, I always thought that charity was a virtue that is encouraged by, if nothing else, by the US tax code. Giving away stuff can also encourage the growth of organizations by goodwill and network effects.
That is all.
Apple claims they wish to work together with the Open Source software community. I believe the PNG format came to be as an alternative to GIF, which is patent-encumbered. Since this was created to help out the Open Source (or Free, if you wish) community, I think Apple should try and work out a reasonable deal with the developers. I don't know what this deal should be. That's up to the parties involved.
On the subject of software patents, I believe they should be allowed, although the patent office should closely scrutinize any such patents (as they should for any patents regardless), making sure that among other things, the invention is not a previously obvious solution to a problem (as originally intended), there is no prior art, and that the patent is extremely specific in its spirit and letter, so that a patent for any given technology will only affect people who are developing that specific technology and nothing else. The idea of patents is a good one. The problem is that the system is broken, and therefore, huge corporations abuse it.
Oh well.
There is good reason to believe most of MicroSoft's evil is due to the chance fact that they ended up in the monopoly position and not because the people are actually mean. In some ways we are a lot better off with Bill Gates doing this than if Steve Jobs or Scott McNealy were in that position of power.
It may be relevant if you find out what kind of work was done to preserve gray shades in the masks, to make a softer edged matte (this would require a lot of work as the normal film used for mattes was very high gain and tended to turn everything into black and white). I would bet people were thinking about partial transparency in 1940 or so when Disney used their sodium screen process.
No business can folow every posable source of revenue.
The "looking cool" vs "patent all" deal is an ideal example.
A business will reach a fork where they can only folow one path.. attempting to folow both will undo the efforts of one or both sides.
Darwin "Cool" Patent "Uncool"
The PNG patent undose everything Darwin did. Alienating everyone that Darwin was intended to appeal to.
So Apple wins?
No... Darwin has already put Apple in the position of alienated all those of the "closed source is the best" croud..
This patent could only appeal to the people Apple already lost... or may have never had to start with.
You can't have everything and when you try you end up with nothing...
I don't actually exist.
Oh, the horror! The unethical behaviour!
;)
;)
(Of course, it is perfectly legal to take out a patent, but don't let that stop you from throwing a tizzy fit.
Yes I know, slashdotters view software patents like Microsoft views the GPL (of course Microsoft is wrong, but that doesn't stop them either). But before the Great Slashdot Hornet Swarm decends en masse on poor Apple, I'd like to point a few things out:
1) The patent dates back to 1992. According to O'Reilly's "Web Design in a Nutshell", PNG only dates back to January-February 1995. You'd think that if someone was starting a new graphics file format on which the future of the web depended, they'd check around for patents they might be violating first. Seems like common sense to me, especially since they are billing the format as "patent free".
2) None of the links in the parent posting pointed to anything that explicitly stated that Apple was refusing to license its patented technology to PNG or sending them cease and desist orders. I could not find anything on Google or on Apple's web site to support this. What I did find was this statement at "http://www.apple.com/about/w3c/" (part of Apple's statement in support of royalty free W3C standards:
"While the current draft patent policy does state a "preference" for
royalty-free standards, the ready availability of a RAND option
presents too easy an alternative for owners of intellectual property
who may seek to use the standardization process to control access to
fundamental Web standards. A mandatory royalty-free requirement for
all adopted standards will avoid this result."
One of the links on the Slashdot parent post did refer to lots of companies getting royalty free licensing for this patent. So all the PNG folks need to do, if they haven't already, is ask Apple nicely for their royalty free licensing option, since they are a web file format. End of problem.
3) I know you all really, really hate Apple. But if you are going to make them look evil, you are going to have to try a lot harder next time.
On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected an Apple tree.
In 28 days, she will return to see its fruit:
OS X, the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
An inventor can only make a living by his invention if by some mechanism he retains exclusive use of it.
Not so. How is it possible to find "prior art" which is not patented? Are all such examples produced by starving idealists? I think not. Educators, hobbyists, and business people have innovated/invented from before the time you were born and will do so long after, without bothering to encumber themselves with patent paperwork.
As a small example, if you work, do you make a living at your job? Have you ever done anything you consider original and not obvious? Did you patent all such things?
History is very clear on this point - prior to the development and refinement of intellectual property laws many innovators were undercut and made destitute by competitors that freely copied their innovations but were not saddled with the development costs
When did this stop happening?
Had the US not provided protections to inventors we would not have been marked by the unprecedented degree of scientific and technical advances that we have in fact enjoyed but by a medieval rate of scientific progress
I cannot agree with that statement. How big was Einstein's patent portfolio? Are we marginalizing anyone that does not patent what they do? Think about that one.
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
It no longer matters under U.S. law when they claim invention, under the new patent regime, which is since 1987 IIRC. (The U.S. in the eighties amended its patent and copyright laws to make them conformant to international standards.)
This is not the case. America remains a first-to-invent nation, notwithstanding some conforming amendments to the Patent Act. A patent can be invalidated on grounds of prior invention. See, e.g. 35 U.S.C. s. 102.
However, for prior art from other companies or from private individuals, the day before the patent is filed is early enough to qualify as valid prior art.
Not at all. Again, see 35 U.S.C. s. 102. Prior art must be published prior to the critical date, which is one year prior to the date of filing. Of course, prior art published during the one-year period between the critical date and filing can invalidate a patent, but a sworn statement of conception of the invention on or prior to the date of the reference will suffice to overcome a rejection.
Yes, the U.S. Patent Office lets you patent the rules to games. No other patent office in the world does. There are worse things than software patents out there.
Overstated and understated. That is to say, wrong. Not all game rules are patentable, and most nations do not prohibit a patentable invention merely because it embodies rules to a game. One can usually, but not always, obtain some form of coverage for inventive game mechanics, provided of course, they are new, useful and unobvious. The devil is in the details, but the general statement above doesn't approximate the truth.
``Compositing a source and destination image using a mask.''
And, undoubtedly, it was done decades before by image processing researchers.
Well, to be fair, there was Copland. Remember that one? The huge leap in OS's that was supposed to be out about three years ago? They simply couldn't build the thing. Granted, they probably could have thrown a lot of money at the problem and rolled their own, but they decided to just buy one instead. This was probably a good move, but the fact that it took them so fucking long to release a real OS just shows you how much trouble they had with building something as big as a modern system. Not that I think many companies could have done a better job, but the fact remains, Apple couldn't build their own OS.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Not so. How is it possible to find "prior art" which is not patented? Are all such examples produced by starving idealists? I think not. Educators, hobbyists, and business people have innovated/invented from before the time you were born and will do so long after
There will of course be many innovations whose creators will not patent because they do not consider the protection worth the trouble usually because the innovation is incidental to their business plan (if they are a businessman) or their livelyhood (as is the case of educators and hobbyists). But if they are inventing something that they intend to sell they either keep their innovations a secret, patent them, or fail.
As a small example, if you work, do you make a living at your job? Have you ever done anything you consider original and not obvious? Did you patent all such things?
Well I am a designer and an illustrator, my living is entirely dependent on intellectual property in the form of copyright laws. If I did not own the rights to my work I would not be able to sell those rights to my clients and I would have no recourse against anyone using my works after their initial publication. - Open source software as we know it would also be killed by the eradication of intellectual property rights since the creator of the software would have no way of putting those open source conditions on the use of their code.
History is very clear on this point - prior to the development and refinement of intellectual property laws many innovators were undercut and made destitute by competitors that freely copied their innovations but were not saddled with the development costs
When did this stop happening?
Um I thought we covered this - when intellectual property laws were developed. When it does happen the inventor now has legal recourse and a right to be compensated by those using his invention.
How big was Einstein's patent portfolio? Are we marginalizing anyone that does not patent what they do?
Perhaps I misspoke - I should have said technilogical progress rather than scientific progress. Einstein was of course not primarly an inventor but a scientist and a researcher (and patent clerk). Scientists discover natural principles about the universe, inventors apply those principles to some practical purpose. E=mc2 is not patentable but the methods and techniques of applying that physical principle to actually create a nuclear bomb or power plant would be.
As for Einsteins patent portfolio I don't know how extensive it was but at a minimum there are the 45 patents he filed jointly with Leo Szilard, interestingly some of which were for a refrigerator without moving parts.
I'm not a lawyer but I have played Nomic
That's a pretty amusing quote.
If only the real world had a benevolent Administrator to ensure that nobody cheated...
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I don't think jpeg 2000 is going to replace jpeg on a wide scale. I don't know about the lossless mode but j2k's lossy compression advantage over jpg isn't as big as many people think. A lot of it comes from using arithmetic coding by default. jpg supports arithmetic coding as an option, but it's normally not used, because of the IBM patents on arithmetic coding. If you enable arithmetic coding with regular jpg, it compresses almost as much as j2k for the same image quality. Yes, j2k is an improvement, but not enough of one to switch away from a totally pervasive, royalty-free standard.
*Sigh* When are people going to figure out that our economic system doesn't work without scarcity? It's all the same problem, really.
So that's USA internal problem
I wish that were true. Reality is that the US market is so large it can bully other markets into enforcing US style protections. Not to mention, if you piss off a big US company you might spend some quality time in a jail cell when you come to visit. Ask Dimitri.
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.