[vtkusers] SIFT legal issues (PATENTS)

Tue Dec 8 19:03:42 EST 2009

David,

A U.S. Patent grants a 20-years long Monopoly
on the following rights for an invention:

      * Use
      * Make
      * Sell
      * Offer for sale
      * Import

These rights are "Exclusive" rights, meaning that the
patent holder (the "assignee") does NOT necesarily
have the right to exercise any of these actions, but she
has the right to *exclude* others from performing these
actions.

The reason why the assignee doesn't necessarily have
the right to perform these actions is that they may require
for her to acquire licenses from other patent holders on
pre-requisites for this particular invention. (e.g. you could
have the patent for the Light-Saber, but I may have the patent
for "Methods and apparatus for Jedi Fighting", so you still
need to get a license from me, before you start making,
using, selling, offering for sale... your Light-Sabers...).

You also have to get a license from the patent holder of
"Futuristics weapons" and the patent holder of "Plasma-based
weapons, and the patent holder of "Apparatus activated by
The Force"... )

This 20-year long Monopoly (that is a Patent) is granted
*in exchange* for the full public disclosure of the invention.
In principle the patent document is such public disclosure,
and that document is NOT copyrighted.

Talking, writing, commenting, criticizing, reviewing, and teaching
about Patented inventions are all rights that everybody have.

Allowing for such dissemination of information is actually the
other half of the "Economic bargain" that the US Congress offers
as an incentive for innovators when it gives them the Patent
Monopoly that allows them to exclude all of the 300 million
people in the US to use those methods for the next 20 years.

That dissemination is one of the purposes of giving the patent
holder that 20-year long Monopoly, despite the fact that is well
known that Monopolies are destructive for the Market Economy
(because they simply prevent competition).

You certainly have the right to publish papers about Patented
methods (whether they are your Patents, or someone else's
patents).

What is very dangerous and misleading is when authors publish
papers WITHOUT disclosing the fact that the methods presented
in a paper are the subject of a Patent.  In those cases, readers
may make the assumption that the methods are in the Public
Domain and they are available for anyone to use (make, sell,
offer for sale or import...).  Readers then proceed to start using,
such methods and to become dependent on them, only to
discover years later that somebody had acquire a Monopoly
on their use, and that they are requesting a Court to order you
to stop using "their" method, and to pay them for the damages
that you have inflicted to their economic market.

This is usually called "Submarine Patents" and IMHO are a
display of unethical behavior on the part of the authors of such
papers.  A classical example is the LZW patents + papers and
their implications for the use of GIF images on the Internet.

Unfortunately, many technical Journals and Conferences do NOT
have a policy of Patent disclosure. (Medical conferences, on the
other hand, do this on a routine basis. e.g. if you go to RSNA to
claim that Light-Sabers are the cure for liver tumors, they will ask
you to disclose if you have financial interests on any company
that produces Light-Sabers, because, that obviously will bias your
opinion on the effectiveness of   "Jedi-based tumor treatment
methods").

See for example:
http://www.rsna.org/publications/rad/PIA/policies/conflicts.html

So,... you are very welcome to submit papers about Patented
methods to the Insight Journal (whether you hold such Patents
or somebody else does). However, I would strongly encourage
you to *disclose* in the first sentence of the abstract and in the
first sentence of the Introduction, that one (or several) aspects
of the methods described in the paper are covered by US (or
other countries) Patents.

A typical disclosure could look like:

    "Portions of the methods described in this paper are
      covered by US. Patents 6,666,666 and 6,999,666."

The Patent number is sufficient for anybody to find the text
of the patent at the USPTO web site (http://www.uspto.gov/)
or at Google Patents (http://www.google.com/patents).

With such disclosure, readers can make an *informed*  decision
on whether they want to continue reading the paper and maybe
trying the said methods, and maybe get a license from the patent
holder.

It is also good to warn readers about the fact that when they
build software that implements such patented methods they
are "making" the invention and therefore they are infringing
on the Patent.  When they "run" the software, they are "using"
the invention, and again, they are infringing on the Patent.

Use in "Research" is not really exempt from the restrictions
of the Patent.

There are only two types of "Research" activities for which use
of Patented inventions without permission, have been accepted
as allowed:

1) When the Patent pertains to a Pharmaceutical,
    and the research in question relates to the process
    of studying the compound for the purpose of pursuing
    FDA approval.

2) When you are doing it:

               "Solely for amusement,
                 to satisfy idle curiosity,
                 or for strictly philosophical inquiry,"

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/2002Madeyedit.html
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/13615/

---

If you are a member of any technical society that organizes
Journals and Conferences (e.g. IEEE, ACM, ...) you should
promote the practice of disclosure of Patented methods in
all publications as a requirement for accepting a paper.

As a reader of their papers you have the right to know if
they are being published with a marketing intent.

Authors who do not disclose Patents are engaging in a de-
ceptive behavior, and simply using Conferences and Journals
as an inexpensive marketing platform for preparing the market
of their prospective products.

----

This is particularly damaging in our technical field,
because there are today about 170,000 Software
related patents in the USPTO.

and some of them cover basic topics such as:

1)  pop-up windows in a browser
2)  Fourier Transforms
3)  Singular Value Decomposition
4)  Solving Linear systems
....

Here is a reading short list:

5,835,392 Method for performing complex fast Fourier transforms
5,886,908 Method of efficient Gradient Computation
6,055,556 Apparatus and method for Matrix Multiplication
6,078,938 Method and system for Solving Linear Systems
6,356,926 Device and method for calculating FFT
6,434,582 Cosine algorithm for relatively small angles
6,640,237 Method and system for generating a Trigonometric Function
6,665,697 Fourier Analysis method and apparatus calculating
                   the Fourier Factor Wn utilizing trigonometric relations
6,745,215 Computer apparatus, program and method for determining
                   the equivalence of two algebraic functions
6,792,569 Root solver and associated method for solving finite field
                   polynomial equations.
5,132,992 Audio and video transmission and receiving systems

.....

If you are not depressed yet,

you can continue with the following patents
on essential Web technologies:

                   http://webshop.ffii.org/

This is from the web site of the

      "Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure"

one of the organizations that have opposed Software Patents,
particularly in the European Union.

--

You may find interesting to read the following books:

A)  "The Public Domain"
      "Enclosing the Commons of the  Mind"
        by James Boyle
        Yale University Press
       http://www.thepublicdomain.org/

B)  "Patent Failure"
      "How Judges, Bureaucrats,
       and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk"
       by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer
       Princeton University Press
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/dopatentswork/

       Particularly this chapter on Software Patents:
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/dopatentswork/dopat9.pdf

C)   "Intellectual Property and Open  Source"
       "A Practical Guide to Protecting Code"
        by Van Lindberg
        O'Reilly Press
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517960

D)  "Math You Can't Use"
      "Patents, Copyright and Software"
       by Ben Klemens
       Brookings Institution Press
http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/2005/mathyoucantuse.aspx

E)  "Introduction to Economic Analysis."
      McAfee, R. Preston, , and Tracy R. Lewis. 1969 .
      Flat World Knowledge.
      <http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/node/29467> .
      (under Creative Commons License).

You may also find interesting the material
from our Lecture on "Software Patents":

http://public.kitware.com/OpenSourceSoftwarePractice/images/3/33/OpenSourceSoftware-Patents-Fall2009.odp

from the "Open Source Software Practices"
course at RPI.

The topics of Copyright and Patents should
be mandatory material for anybody how is
pursuing an Engineering degree.
(or a Msc, or a Ph.D.)

I would leave you with this quote:

-------------------------------------------------------------

   “Governor Thomas was so pleased with the
    construction of this stove...
    that he offered to give me a patent for the
    sole vending of them for a term of years;
    but I declined it from a principle which has
    ever weighted with me on such occasions,

    viz.:
    That as we enjoy great advantages from the
     inventions of others, we should be glad of
     an opportunity to serve others by any
     invention of ours; and this we should do
     freely and generously.”

                                  Benjamin Franklin

------------------------------------------------------------

    Regards,

          Luis

------------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Bill Lorensen <bill.lorensen at gmail.com> wrote:
> David,
>
> I think you can certainly publish. You have to be careful about how
> you use it. Just because you are at a University does not give you
> rights to use it as far as I know.
>
> Perhaps Luis will comment. Although he is not a lawyer, he knows much
> more about this than I.
>
> Bill
>
> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 3:59 PM, David Doria <daviddoria+vtk at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Bill Lorensen <bill.lorensen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> David,
>>>
>>> According to wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-invariant_feature_transform
>>>
>>>  "The algorithm is patented in the US; the owner is the University of
>>> British Columbia.".
>>>
>>>  If this is true then we cannot include it in VTK or ITK.
>>>
>>> And you should be careful how you use it in your own work. You may be
>>> violating the patent.
>>>
>>> Bill
>>
>> I thought that was the case about I/VTK.
>>
>> However, what about the VJ?
>>
>> I suppose I need a crash course in patent law, but am I really not
>> allowed to even use it in my own work? Surely people have published
>> papers saying "we then use SIFT to blah blah", right?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> David
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