[Insight-users] SIFT and patent

[Lodron, Gerald]

I looked at the public wiki of itk and found in

http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_Release_4/Enhancing_Image_Registration_Framework

the discussion item:

 *   Add feature based registration techniques (SIFT (patented?), SURF, etc)


SIFT is only patented in the US (I searched the web and could only find an US patent, please tell me if you can find another one) , but the world is much larger than the US (yes it is) :) so if you want to use SIFT in Europe it is no problem... So there shouldn't be a problem implementing SIFT in ITK...

For those who are not confirm with patents, I am a little bit confirm because I currently made one (or I am currently trying to get one, so the patent is not yet accepted):

-      There is no "world" patent!!! Such a thing does not exist....You must make it for every country separately...

-      And if a patent is confirmed by the US it does not lead to a confirmation in other countries (due to our patent lawyer the US patent is the easiest one to get, it is much harder to get a patent in Europe).

-      It is not possible to patent an algorithm (e.g. it would not be possible to patent the FFT), it is only possible to patent an algorithm for a specific problem (e.g. using the FFT for image compression). So as far as I know, SIFT is patented for finding same points in two images. If someone uses SIFT for another problem (I cannot find any example, sry) he can use it without limitations...

-      It could be, but I do not know it, that SIFT is only patented for commercial products, not for research purposes

So in my opinion there is no reason why ITK should not include SIFT...

Maybe this is interesting for anyone... Otherwise sorry for spamming

Best regards..
Gerald
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