[Insight-developers] Patented Code : suggested Topic for Frid ay's TCON

[Lorensen, William E (Research)]

My guess is that we'll have to remove the ICP PointMetric. We had a similar
thing happen in VTK several years ago. We had implemented a polygon
smoothing algorithm that Taubin published in Siggraph. We found out later
that IBM held a patent on it. Rather than work through the IBM patent, we
yanked the code. I talked to Taubin about it. He said we should have just
left it, but I said I didn't think he had the power to say that.

The patented directory in VTK holds algorithms patented by GE and we did
receive permission to distribute them from GE. We place a contact name in
the header files. Here's how they read (this one is for Marching Cubes).
     THIS CLASS IS PATENTED UNDER UNITED STATES PATENT NUMBER 4,710,876
     "System and Method for the Display of Surface Structures Contained
     Within the Interior Region of a Solid Body".
     Application of this software for commercial purposes requires 
     a license grant from GE. Contact:

         Carl B. Horton
         Sr. Counsel, Intellectual Property
         3000 N. Grandview Blvd., W-710
         Waukesha, WI  53188
         Phone:  (262) 513-4022
         E-Mail: Carl.Horton at med.ge.com

     for more information.

This has worked well and companies do contact GE about licensing.

If Jay can get permission from UPenn to do something similar, then we should
move the FC code into a Patented directory. If he can't, I would say we have
to delete the FC algorithms from ITK. Jay can certainly maintain them on his
own. We can tell people to contact him about their availability.

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Miller, James V (Research) [mailto:millerjv at crd.ge.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 8:02 AM
To: 'Luis Ibanez'; Insight-developers (E-mail)
Cc: tyoo at mail.nih.gov
Subject: RE: [Insight-developers] Patented Code : suggested Topic for
Frid ay's TCON


For ICP, GM holds the patent.  I don't think Besl is at GM anymore.
I think he moved to Wavefront a few years ago.  He might have left
Wavefront and gone into academia.

The point is we would have to get permission from GM not Besl.

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Luis Ibanez [mailto:luis.ibanez at kitware.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 5:17 PM
To: Insight-developers (E-mail)
Cc: tyoo at mail.nih.gov
Subject: Re: [Insight-developers] Patented Code : suggested Topic for
Friday's TCON



This topic seems to deserve some discussion,
maybe we could talk about it on friday's tcon.

Just for the record, the following are some of the
algorithms whose "Patented" status need to be discussed:

       A - Fuzzy Connectedness
       B - Marching Cubes
       C - Iterative Closest Point (ICP)
       D - Active Shape Models


For ICP what we have in ITK proper is only the Metric that
computes the array of distances from points in one set to
the closest in another set. Up to there, that probably doesn't
touches the patent, since it is only measure of mis-registration.

The code in  Examples/Registration may be dealing closer with
the ICP patent. We could remove these 3 examples from the toolkit
and leave them in text in the Software Guide.

It seems that getting in touch with the authors of the ICP
patent may be helpful. It is still possible that they may
be willing to authorize the distribution of this code with
the toolkit (perhaps a naive thought...).




     Luis






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