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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?
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.
Uh, sorry, what? Is anyone out there still *not* using PNG?
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
It looks to me like the patent covers alpha-masking, not alpha-blending.
As I recall, PNG and SVG both use alpha channels. That is, transparency data is stored as a part of the image's color encoding.
Alpha-masking is different. In this case, an image is defined in the "normal" RGB fashion. Along with it, a second image is stored, which has only alpha information in it, not color. You could say that an alpha channel is inline, whereas an alpha mask is not.
Is the patent ridiculous? Of course it is. But I don't think it would affect PNG and SVG anyway, because they use a different method of storing transparency information.
The OSOpinion article refers to Greg Roelofs'
/. crowd lives for this stuff, I wouldn't presume to imagine that my comments will have any discernable effect on the (flame)festivities. :-) "
:)
forum post. My favorite part of the Roelofs' post is this classic line:
" So I nominate this for the 2001 tempest-in-a-teapot award... But since the
How many posts did that article get the other day?
That's why the call for prior art goes on. Deny that Apple has a case, but build a strong defense against their case. It's the cover-your-bases approach, and, sadly, the only wise one available in the current intellectual property age.
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
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.
You mean like the way Unisys did with the GIF format?
A while back Apple posted this to their web site. It seems they are against RAND licensing fees. I assume that would also include their own technology, but I am really not sure how all this fits together.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
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.
mediadiva
yes.. and if you do a bit of investigation you'll notice all browsers support them, including IE. In fact, you'll also notice that hordes of websites also use PNGs.
There is practically no decent reason for any website to still be using GIF files as the conversion of both the html and files is pretty easy...
PNGs are also way technically better.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Here is an article about this issue on LinuxToday.
Apparently the patent only covers compositing of images that start from several sources. This is all very well for PNG images, as all the data is stored in one file. However, once the PNG is in a web browser, it may get composited with other images from another source. If the page has a background image and an alpha'd PNG on top of it, surely that would then infringe the patent?
Probably not a problem for Microsoft with IE - they would probably just have a little patent fight with Apple - but for free browsers this could be a problem.
There's a few interesting threads on
usenet about it as well.
So if it's not a big deal, why was there a general call for prior art to overturn Apple's patent?
is there a problem with this? with the average IQ of a patent lawyer at about 35 these days, you can't be too careful. mark my words, the future of Open Source depends upon it.
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
Part of a legal feasibility study has to be a patent infringement analysis. Whether you agree kthat software should be patentable or not, the fact it that in the US it IS patentable. If someone else made it first and was granted the exclusive right to make that product, then you will infringe on their rights if you make the product.
There is simply no excuse for not doing this analysis. Yes, there is some up-front cost to a patent attorney. However, with a large enough development group, this cost can easily be absorbed by the group at a nominal level per member. The potential consequence is that every developer can find themselves defending a patent infringement suit. The last estimate of which I am aware placed the cost of litigating an "average" infringement suit at just around $500,000.00. If the case is deemed "exceptional," the infringers could potentially have to pay the patentee's legal costs as well as their own, on top of paying damages for the patentee's lost profits.
Bottom line: all this can be avoided by getting a noninfringement opinion by a reputable and competent patent attorney. This is a basic software engineering step and should be performed at the very beginning of the development process. The attorney will even be able to suggest ways you can still go forward with the project, but do so in a way that does not infringe on someone else's rights.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Nothing's wrong with the patent
At least not for several years until the PNG-format is used all over the internet and apple can make a fortune by taking it out of the drawer.
The idea of a patent, is for the inventor of a technology, idea, whatever to have rights over it for 20 years.
We all know Apple wasn't the first, and therefor they shouldn't have the patent. I'm not worried about it either, but I would like another stupid patent overturned.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
This shows what the slashdot community thinks of software patents. I agree that they need to go, kinda, but for slightly different reasons. But what they do today is only to hinder development, forcing new names and similar techniques just to stay out of trouble for things that I think should be free for anyone to use. Isn't there a better way to pay inventors (because they should be paid I think) instead of this horrible system.
;)
Socialistic capitalism
Sites that don't use PNG:
www.salon.com, www.userfriendly.org, yahoo.com, www.redhat.com, www.debian.org, www.gnu.org, and of course, www.slashdot.org.
So, who is using PNG?
Je ne parle pas francais.
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."
No, if the Apple patent were valid it would not be overturned. Anyone wanting to use the technology would have to pay licensing fees.
It's also relevant in a different sense: it tells us about what Apple is up to, what their attitude is towards free and open source software, and the intellectual and research standards at the company.
I don't understand your point. Are you happy with Apple because they are no longer requiring royalty payments, or are you complaining that they didn't give the patent to the public domain all together? Please explain what Apple is "up to."
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
One way that the Open Source community could help fight software patents is to establish a database of prior art. When issues like this come up, relavant prior art would be hyperlinked to the supposed patent.
Just for the record (not that this is scientific or anything) my current ~/.netscape/cache has
- 65 PNGs,
- 1,188 GIFs, and
- 170 JPGs
in it. I suspect that might be a little higher than average in the PNG department because I tend to frequent sites run by rabid free software rebels. YMMVI tried, but unfortunately the space taken up in comparison to slightly-compressed JPGs made me bail on the idea.
There are lots of patents that discuss alpha blending. They don't affect PNG.
The important thing to remember about patents is "don't go looking for trouble". Don't worry about new patents that come out -- wait until the patent owner comes looking for you. If you look far enough in the patent database, you will certianly find patents that can be interpreted to cover your idea. Unless you bring it to their attention, or are a direct competitor, most patent owners won't care about you. Most companies view patents as a defensive play -- they don't really care about them, they just grab the patents so that if a competitor sues them for patent infringement, they can sue back. E.g. Via countersuing Intel on patents.
What were you compressing? Photographs?
:(
They're not intended to replace JPEG[*] they're best suited for application where you would use a GIF. As with GIF the compression is lossless and best for compressing line art and simple computer generated stuff.
In addition to GIF you also get:
* > 256 colours
* Full 8 bit alpha channel (but not in IE on Windows
Then there's MNG - for animated PNGs like animated GIFs and [*] JNG which in a PNG which internally uses uses JPEG compression and thus is pretty good with photos. These are more obscure though. I think JNG might allow transparency/alpha channel, which would be cool, as regular JPEG does not.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
READ THE PATENT. And not just the claims, the whole thing. It specifically disclaims alpha-blending, mentioning it as a well known and inferior precursor.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
If you read the patent, it's an almost textbook example of a painfully obvious 'invention'. The patent clearly admits that the use of a special transparent 'color' in one image is an old technique for blending two images. Next it admits that using a 1-bit alpha mask is a known technique for combining two images. Then it admits that an 8-bit alpha mask has been used to smoothly blend two images in the compositing process! Finally, it admits the 'invention': Let's use a full color image instead of a grayscale image for the alpha mask! Wow! How do they think of these things! What a genius it takes to think that maybe after first using black and white masks, then greyscale, you might try color!
The real clincher is that they go on to list all of these wonderous things you can do with full color mask. But most of their examples only require a good old fasioned greyscale map! Somebody at Apple pulled a fast one at the patent office. The entire 'Fig 1.' shows an example which doesn't even use Apple's 'invention'! It just uses good old fashioned greyscale alpha masks which Apple lists as prior art! Then two of the claims list anti-aliased text! Does anybody do this with color alpha masks? No font renderer spits out multi-color images! They spit out greyscale which is used to merge the text color/pattern with the background! Once again, they claim their invention is needed to do something which everyone does with the prior art method!
On the plus side, it's such a silly invention it's trivial to work around. Here's an idea: use three different alpha masks! One per channel! I wonder if Apple managed to get a patent on that. Hey, here's another nifty idea! Generate the three alpha masks from the three channels of a color image! I bet Apple never thought of that! Only a genius like me could think of that. What an invention! I'll make millions!
Man, this patent is the worst. Check out Claim 3: A method as in claim 1 further comprising displaying the result image. Whoh Nellie! Your going to display the image! Man, that's adds a whole new level of complexity. Usually, I composite images and then just free the memory. But actually displaying an image you've generated! Man, what incredible insight!
Microsoft uses them all over Luna. (That's Windows XP's candy-coated UI redesign.) I've been hacking with it a little, and it looks like they're using the alpha channel for cheap anti-aliasing on frequently scaled bitmaps. Other places, they fall back on the traditional .bmp format with "magic pink" transparency masks.
This sig intentionally left blank.
Remove www.debian.org from your list. It does use .png images (and there are half a dozen of them on the main page, at least), just not exclusively.For that matter, including www.gnu.org is somewhat unfair, as they pretty much only use the one image on the entire site, and although it's in jpeg format on the main page, it is also available in .png (in fact, the high resolution version is only available in .png). See http://www.gnu.org/graphics/agnuhead.html.
So who is using PNG? Some of the people you list as not using PNG.
(... mutter mutter ... moderators that don't check claims ... mutter mutter ...)
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Fear Itself
Misinformation on this matter has caused many open-source advocates to incorrectly accuse Apple of holding back Open Web technologies.
Let's hope that cooler heads prevail and that fear-debunking articles such as this one are more widely read."
It is amazing how worked up everyone got in November when they learned that a company that supports web standards and has a public policy of royalty-free licensing for them (as of October) had responded in June to a call to disclose all patents to the PNG group that they should be aware of for infringement issues in the future.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
In my job as a web scripter, we can't use PNG, as policy dictates that we be compatible with as many browsers as possible. Netscape 4.x isn't compatible without a plugin, so it's a no go. That browser has caused more grief than all the others combines.
On the flip side, we can't use GD to generate GIFs, as there's no GIF support, so all we're left with are JPEGs with calculated backgrounds. No transparencies.
If Apple's patent is valid, nothing put out by the PNG group infringes. However, when an application, say, Mozilla, displays a PNG in front of some other graphic and uses the PNG's alpha mask to do partial transparency, that would infringe. Similarly, when a Gnome or KDE desktop displays a PNG icon and uses the partial transparency to have a smooth and not a jagged edge, that would infringe. But just storing the alpha mask in the file doesn't collide with anything in the patent.
In practice, there's so much prior art that the patent will be dead meat once it hits a court. Traditionally, the patent holder deals with this by licensing for a fee small enough that it's cheaper to pay than fight, and in this case, perhaps giving an out to the free software folks, while possibly trying to get a bit of cash from others. But in this case, I suspect that even that strategy is not going to work.
PNG is stealthily gaining acceptance. I think there are three reasons why PNG hasn't gone as far as it should have by now:
Ding! Wrong.
Communicator (4.76 anyway) does support PNGs. I know this because I can view my Webalizer output just fine with it. ;)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Well, think about it. x=any number, including 76 :)
For example, my PPPoE gateway runs FreeBSD 3.4. I could say that I'm running 3.x, and it supports PPPoE. However, I'd be wrong to do so, as versions of FreeBSD before 3.4 don't support PPPoE.
But I'd also be wrong to say FreeBSD 3.x doesn't support PPPoE. Tch :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Well, the patent most certainly looks like a standard mask-like image manipulation. So I understand people to get paranoid about this (given that PNG uses a mask for its alpha transparancy). I still doubt if the GIMP wouldn't be influenced by this patent.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
This is true, and regrettable; but to say that Communicator doesn't support PNG is akin to saying that Mosaic (before 2.0) didn't support GIF because, well, it didn't support any of the 89a extensions (at least AFAIR; Mosaic 2.0 BTW was the first Mosaic to support JPEG inline too).
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
The fact remains that these people tried to patent what was already a standard textbook technique at the time. Whether they deliberately mischaracterized and ignored prior art, or whether they were simply ignorant you will have to decide for yourself.