that's patented too :-(
Posted Sep 9, 2009 17:41 UTC (Wed) by
PO8 (guest, #41661)
In reply to:
that's patented too :-( by coriordan
Parent article:
The Grumpy Editor's hugin experience
Yes, SIFT
(US
Patent 6,711,293) is patent encumbered. Since the patent holder is the University of British Columbia, it would be nice if someone tried talking to them about licensing the patent free of charge for open source programs; I don't know if anyone has done that yet.
While it has
been widely claimed that SURF is also
patented, I cannot seem to find an actual patent or
application. It is possible that the SIFT patent covers it,
since they are similar methods and the SIFT claims are
fairly broad.
I'm currently working with a student on something that might
or might not avoid these and other microfeature patents and
work OK. Other feature
description algorithms listed by Wikipedia include
Canny, FAST, SUSAN, GLOH, and LESH. I do not know much
about the quality and patent status of these algorithms.
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