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PNG Group Unconcerned About Apple's Patent

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the devil-may-care dept.

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?

3 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Leftover Paranoia by rsimmons · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Why, you ask? by Lars+T. · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --

    Lars T.

    To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

  3. That's an utterly ridiculous attitude. by Nindalf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."