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The patent on SIFT expired yesterday

patents.google.com

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Re: The patent on SIFT expired yesterday

#41

Post by asmithmd1 »

peter_retief wrote: post #14
Reelin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open publication (at least in western jurisdictions) serves as prior art. If you don't intend to patent, just write about what you're doing openly and often!

Can any publication serve as prior art? Can I use a personal blog or do I need a certain type of publication? I know of people who have sent copies of their work in the mail to themselves to prove prior art.

Yes, you are free to pay a lawyer and sue to attempt to invalidate a patent using your blog as evidence of prior art. Of course whichever side can afford it, will bury the other side in motions and discovery requests until they win.

Re: The patent on SIFT expired yesterday

#43

Post by MobileVet »

Evolution Robotics (later acquired by iRobot) was the first licensee of this patent for robotics applications. It was very cutting edge for the time and allowed our robots the ability to recognize real world objects. Having the robot follow a book that you carried in front of it was trippy in 2002.

Later we applied it to loss prevention in grocery retail with cameras at ground level watching under the cart. If we recognized anything in the ‘bob’ (bottom of the basket) we would automatically add it to the receipt.

Good memories.

Edit: typo 'tea' -> real

Re: The patent on SIFT expired yesterday

#44

Post by quietbritishjim »

laumars wrote: post #29
Reelin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open publication (at least in western jurisdictions) serves as prior art. If you don't intend to patent, just write about what you're doing openly and often!

Unfortunately prior art doesn't stop someone else from patenting your work. It just offers an avenue for someone to invalidate that patent. Worse still, the process of doing so is often riskier for small businesses than if they just agree to pay a licence fee.

But your argument applies equally to publishing your work as a patent as it does to publishing by some other means such as a journal article. So your comment doesn't address the parent comment at all.

Re: The patent on SIFT expired yesterday

#45

Post by laumars »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #44
laumars wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately prior art doesn't stop someone else from patenting your work. It just offers an avenue for someone to invalidate that patent. Worse still, the process of doing so is often riskier for small businesses than if they just agree to pay a licence fee.

But your argument applies equally to publishing your work as a patent as it does to publishing by some other means such as a journal article. So your comment doesn't address the parent comment at all.

Only in America and even there that's only true in theory. In practice it is a lot easier to invalidate a patent with an earlier patent than it is to argue prior art with a publication (this is, of course, depending on how the patents are written).

Patents can also be used "defensively" in ways that prior art cannot. So it's not always just about prevention.

Personally I think whole system could use an overall. Not just in America either.

Re: The patent on SIFT expired yesterday

#46

Post by ChrisLomont »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #44
laumars wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately prior art doesn't stop someone else from patenting your work. It just offers an avenue for someone to invalidate that patent. Worse still, the process of doing so is often riskier for small businesses than if they just agree to pay a licence fee.

But your argument applies equally to publishing your work as a patent as it does to publishing by some other means such as a journal article. So your comment doesn't address the parent comment at all.

Patent clerks search prior patents far more thoroughly than they do the entire literature of mankind. Having a prior patent is stronger protection from having someone else patent than is simply publishing somewhere.

Re: The patent on SIFT expired yesterday

#48

Post by amelius »

rsp1984 wrote: post #40
skunkworker wrote: post #4

Does this mean that OpenCV will be able to now include SIFT in the “free” modules. Or are there more roadblocks before including it?

I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I know expired US patents enter the public domain. After their expiration the described invention can be freely used by anyone for any purpose [1]. So I think the answers to your questions are yes and no. [1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-long-is-my-paten...

Perhaps there are still patents in other regions (?)

Re: The patent on SIFT expired yesterday

#49

Post by black_puppydog »

MobileVet wrote: post #43

Evolution Robotics (later acquired by iRobot) was the first licensee of this patent for robotics applications. It was very cutting edge for the time and allowed our robots the ability to recognize real world objects. Having the robot follow a book that you carried in front of it was trippy in 2002. Later we applied it to loss prevention in grocery retail with cameras at ground level watching under the cart. If we rec…

wait... the concept was to have video cameras on the ground point upward in a supermarket setting?

Did anyone involved in this ever stop to think "what would a person wearing a skirt say to this?" It's not exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to be able to explain away with "oh no but we really don't use it for that" no?

Re: The patent on SIFT expired yesterday

#50

Post by groar »

OceanSunfish wrote: post #42
brokensegue wrote: post #6

Is sift still relevant today?

Imho a CNN is like a generalization of what SIFT does, so a CNN can be trained to be equivalent to SIFT, but it can also be trained with more specific features for your use case.

Sure, in terms of expressivity, you can obtain much better results with a CNN. But very often, it is done at the cost of computational efficiency: SIFT descriptors are "easy" to compute.
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