[Insight-users] itkConfidenceConnectedImageFilter / Patented (part of the FuzzyConnectednessFilter) or not ?

Tue Aug 28 01:58:36 EDT 2007

Hi Luis,

I found your discussion regarding "Intellectual Monopolies"
interesting. Moreover, it has raised some questions which are plaguing
me:

   Can we submit implementations of patented algorithms to the Insight Journal?
   Is there any point?

The reason I ask is that I have implemented the minimal path
extraction algorithm given in:

   [1] T. Deschamps. Curve and Shape Extraction with Minimal Path and
Level-Sets techniques: Applications to 3D Medical Imaging. PhD
dissertation, University of Paris Dauphine, 2001.
   [2] T. Deschamps and L. Cohen. Fast extraction of minimal paths in
3D images and applications to virtual endoscopy. Medical Image
Analysis, 5(4):281–299, 2001.

I used the US Patent office database search page you provided with the
terms "minimal path" and "fast marching" and received five hits. I
tried to decipher the terminology used in these patents but the
"inventions" still remain a mystery to me.

Do I continue with the planned Insight Journal submission? Will the
review process uncover if a patent covers the "idea(s)" I have
implemented? Is there an easy mechanism to determine if a particular
algorithm can be included in the toolkit *before* actually spending
the time implementing it and preparing a submission? (I was quite
disappointed to find these five patents and discover the work I have
been preparing may now be of little use to others...)

Thanks for your advice.

Cheers, Dan

On 28/08/07, Luis Ibanez <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Flo,
>
> It is indeed very wise to pay attention to intellectual
> "property" issues when dealing with Open Source software.
>
>
> By the way, the term "PROPERTY" is incorrectly used in this
> context. What many people refer to as "intellectual property"
> is actually a set of exclusive rights assigned to creators
> of inventions and works of art. You cannot really "own" an
> idea or the expression of an idea, mainly because no idea
> exist by itself, instead they are based on previous ideas.
>
> What a patent grant is the monopoly of use of an idea for
> a limited time. It practice it is only useful from preventing
> others from using an idea. A Patent doesn't grant the holders
> the right of exploiting the idea, because, as it is usually
> the case, the idea itself may require other concepts in order
> for it to work, and those other concepts may be covered by
> other patents.
>
> What copyright grants is the exclusive right of preventing
> others from reproducing a work of art.
>
> What the law grants is not the *property* of an idea or the
> expression of an idea, but the benefit of having the monopoly
> of exploitation of the idea *for a limited time*. The fact that
> patents and copyrights expire is an indication that they are
> not "property" in the proper sense.
>
> In order to be more precise we should refer to these concepts
> as "Intellectual Monopolies", not as the misnomer "Intellectual
> Property".
>
>
> See for example:
>
>     Free Culture
>     by Lawrence Lessig
>     http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/
>     page 56.
>
>
> -----
>
> Note that you are giving a paper publication as the reference
> to a patent. This is very misleading, a Journal publication
> is not the proper way of referring to a patent. The content of
> a paper may be pertinent to multiple patents, or it may refer
> to only some of the claims of a patent.
>
> What you should do is to search the database of the US Patent
> office:
>
> http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html
>
> E.g. for the terms "Fuzzy Connectedness". That will lead you
> to a list including the following issued patents:
>
>
> 6,885,762       Scale-based image filtering of magnetic resonance data
>
> 6,584,216       Method for standardizing the MR image intensity scale
>
> 5,812,691       Extraction of fuzzy object information in
>                  multidimensional images for quantifying MS lesions
>                  of the brain
>
>
>  From that list, you could proceed to read the claims of every patent
> to see how they refer to the technical aspect of the method that
> you are interested on.
>
>
> ------
>
>
> The ConfidenceConnectedImageFilter is not subject to any of these
> Fuzzy connectedness patents, since it is based on a very basic concept
> that anybody with a basic background on statistics will recognize as
> prior art.
>
> The filter is simply estimating means and variances of the pixel
> population. There is no computation of shortest path in the
> ConfidenceConnectedness filter.
>
> Note that when you are considering the coverage of a patent,
> "Generalization" of the concept is not the way to proceed.
> In the way you are interpreting the method, you could extend
> the coverage of Fuzzy connectedness to any region growing
> method, including probably level sets; since you can always
> come with a "membership function" that frames a region
> growing method as a variant of the Fuzzy connectedness methods.
>
> Instead of generalizing the claims of a patent backward,
> what you must consider is the notion of prior art. That is,
> whether the method under consideration is based on knowledge
> that was public before the particular patent was issued.
>
>
> The decadence of the patent system, and the frenzy for
> appropriation of knowledge in which universities and companies
> alike are obsessing, are leaving many research fields to a sad
> state.
>
> Those who care about the survival of any knowledge domain
> should consider following the example of IBM in adopting
> an open peer-review system for patents:
>
>        http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/
>
> Where patent applications are publicly reviewed online
> and exposed to the scrutiny of domain experts. This novel
> system will help prevent the abuses and distortions that
> are becoming the norm of the patent system.
>
>
>
> The "POCD" Patent Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a
> recent epidemic disease that plagues both industry and
> academia. As more professionals get infected with it
> the public domain will get depleted to the point where
> you will not be able to make an addition without having
> to get a license from the holder of an intellectual
> monopoly.
>
>
>
>
>     Regards,
>
>
>         Luis
>
>
>
> -----------
> Flo wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > As part of my PhD I'm writting a software and partially using ITK/VTK
> > functions. Although Copyright and Law infringement are not my
> > specialties, I must be careful when writing an open software for the
> > university I'm in (Sherbrooke, Canada) so that I can tell my  Supervisor
> > he can do what he wants with the code.
> >
> > Thus, Does itkConfidenceConnectedImageFilter fall under any Patent,
> > especially that of Punam SAHA and UDUPA in which he detailled the
> > FuzzyConnectedFilter: Relative Fuzzy Connectedness and Object
> > Definition: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications in Image
> > Segmentation", Nov. 2002. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and
> > Machine Intelligence. vol. 24, No. 11. p. 1485-1500.
> >
> > To me, itkConfidenceConnectedImageFilter derives from the concept of
> > Fuzzy Connectedness, as there is only one step from confidence to  fuzzy
> > ... namely the Membership Function and the determination of the
> > "shortest weighted path" amongst every element to the seed point. Is  it
> > this Path Search that actually separate the Patent from any other
> > confidence Filter ?
> >
> > regards,
> >
> > Flo._______________________________________________
> > Insight-users mailing list
> > Insight-users at itk.org
> > http://www.itk.org/mailman/listinfo/insight-users
> >
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