PNG Group Unconcerned About Apple's Patent

melquiades writes: "A recent story raised concerns that Apple's patent on some forms of alpha compositing was blocking the development of PNG, MNG and SVG. Not so, says Greg Roelofs, a member of the PNG group: 'The PNG group did discuss the Apple patent several weeks ago, and we decided it was completely irrelevant to PNG itself, almost certainly irrelevant to the pnmtopng utility and to PNGs animated extension, MNG, and probably irrelevant to SVG as well.' Here's the article on OS Opinion. So if it's not a big deal, why was there a general call for prior art to overturn Apple's patent? It looks like some PNG developers got worried, but the core team thinks there's no problem. Is this just a case of the right hand not knowing that the left hand is paranoid?" Once bitten, twice shy?

Comments

Leftover Paranoia

[rsimmons]

Its just leftover paranoia from the problem Unisys had with people using the GIF format. The PNG group seems to have a good understanding of the Apple patent, from what I read in the article.

PNG groups opinion isn't particularly relevent

[gorilla]

What's actually relevent is what Apple's lawyers think. It's going to be expensive to fight a legal battle, so expensive that anyone who's been harassed by Unisys has folded, even though there is a fair chance that their patent would be declared invalid if it came up in court.

Re:PNG's

[mediadiva]

I use PNG's everyday, as it is the file formate that firework's (macromedia) uses. It contains a "web layer" and when created in firworks you can create "slice guides" and rules. Similair to how a PSD contains layer. The only difference is, I can open a PNG in IE, though I wont see the layers, and it will be a REALLY big file, compared to what it would be if it was exported out as a gif or jpg or I guess a flat PNG.

Why, you ask?

[Lars T.]

From the the article on OS Opinion: (my emphasis)

Earlier this year, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) asked interested parties to submit information about patents they own that might potentially infringe upon the development of scalable vector graphics (SVG).

So Apple reported one of their patents that could in the future conflict with the development of SVG. Sombody read that, combined the two evil buzz-words "Apple" and "patent", and paranoia kicked in. He then scanned through the patent, found "alpha channel", and thought his worst fears had come true. So he called up some buddies and started the usual anti "evil/stupid patent" actions.

All in all, simply self induced FUD.

That's an utterly ridiculous attitude.

[Nindalf]

While we're at it, let's spend all our time and effort preparing to defend PNG against patents on automated shoe manufacturing and quack magnetic therapy devices. After all, "only a court can decide" whether PNG software infringes on those, too.

The patent itself specifically contrasts what it covers with the use of an alpha channel, such as is used by PNG. It is obviously not a threat to anyone who bothers to read the patent.

Aside from that, PNG was designed to avoid patent issues by people who knew what they were doing, in an drawn-out open process where anyone could have pointed out weaknesses. It's based on well-established techniques with a long history of prior art. Your first assumption should be that any patent either doesn't affect PNG, or is so blatantly invalid that nobody would ever dare take it to court, not that there's trouble ahead because a one-line description of a patent sounds vaguely like something PNG does.

You can't live your life shrieking in terror every time someone whispers "patent."

Re:PNG's

[Doomdark]

Well, the main reasons why PNG hasn't replaced GIFs:

• People are slow in changing their habits; they are used to GIFs, they (still) use GIFs. If it ain't broken don't fix it (that's of course assuming you haven't been harassed by Unisys. :-))
• Some old browsers did not support PNGs at all. Shouldn't be a big problem nowadays, though (esp. since much of Javascript stuff in use would break them anyway)
• PNG doesn't have animation, for cheap-ass simple animation GIF is the choice (MNG would replace it, but it's bit of obscurity, being rather ambitious format project)
• Although PNG has really cool features (full alpha channel is _really_ nice for blending image borders, neat translucency effects etc), many browsers (NS 4.x series, IE on Windows at least until 5.5) still only implement 'GIF-level' features, ie. on/off transparency, no gamma correction etc. Mozilla has good support, and IE on Mac too (no idea why; usually windows version is more advanced).