Show HN: Create image mosaics with Polyfoto(github.com) |
Show HN: Create image mosaics with Polyfoto(github.com) |
The basic technique is to scale down images and treat them as high dimensional points, then match them with patches of the main image, also treated as high dimensional points. This can be done efficiently with high dimensional nearest neighbors.
You might be thinking of SIFT, which was a patented and part of the methodology was more efficient high dimensional searching using best bin first kd-trees.
How can a developer protect themselves from publishing patented software? Is there any way of knowing if a certain type of program is patented?
If you've a seen similar thing pre-existing, chances are that it may be someone's intellectual property, and which then should be respected.
In this particular example, Wikipedia page on photographic mosaics [1] itself has a section on IP aspects of the same [2].
>> How can a developer protect themselves from publishing patented software?
The best approach is to respect the prior art and properly license the same as needed.
At times, a developer may have strong reasons to believe that the related prior patents are either not infringed or are invalid. In this case they should be ready to be challenged.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_mosaic
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_mosaic#Trademark_...
Reading the claim #1 of the said patent, I do not find it "very specific" as you said. It is quite broad within the purposes of making a mosaic image. One way of avoiding infringing claim 1 is to not use a computer for this.
I agree that the Wikipedia page mentions multiple programs doing this for long, however, it has not committed that there has no patent violation and a possibility that the patent holder "has chosen not to bring infringement proceedings" is also cited.
[1] https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/0267124...
Also matching by root mean squared error is pretty specific. It is possible to match based on other error criteria.
I see your point now, although I do not see the original person (@tomcam) explicitly saying 'patents prevented photomosaics'. I only see "Fun to see it commoditized like this." [1]
>> Also matching by root mean squared error is pretty specific. It is possible to match based on other error criteria.
The applicability of the said patent [2] is not limited to use of RMS error. I do not see "root mean square" anywehere in Claim 1 or any independent claim of the patent. That is introduced only in dependent claims like claim 3.
In case you do not already, you may consider reading [3-5] below to understand how coverage of a patent depends on independent and dependent claims.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27532662
[2] https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/0267124...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_application#Claims
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_claim
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_claim#Basic_types_and_c...
"A mosaic image is formed from a database of source images. More particularly, the source images are analyzed, selected and organized to produce the mosaic image. A target image is divided into tile regions, each of which is compared with individual source image portions to determine the best available matching source image by computing red, green and blue channel root-mean square error. The mosaic image is formed by positioning the respective best-matching source images at the respective tile regions."
Please take a look at the claims I have cited in this comment chain, and also read about the importance and relevance of the claims from the links I recommended.
When reading a patent to understand what it covers or not, it's recommended to start with the independent claims.
Hope this helps. :-)
Please read carefully to realize that there were multiple commercial software programs that did this over 20 years ago.