Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 19:03:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Paul Rubin Subject: IPIX attacks free German software (fwd) I'm not sure what the ruckus is if the guy is really including a copyrighted photo from the Ipix site, as their letter alleges. But the Ipix patents that don't seem to be part of this dispute are quite bogus, and this article says some enlightening things about them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steven Morton Newsgroups: rec.photo.digital Message-ID: <370EACE4.AF394E89@sci.monash.edu.au> Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 11:44:04 +1000 Subject: IPIX attacks free German software Helmut Dersch of Germany has written an excellent (multi-platform, both Mac and PC) image processing program called "Panorama Tools". Anyone could download this FREE program from Helmut's web site: http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/ Panorama Tools is a powerful program which allows the user to remap or convert images from one type to another type. For example PTools can convert images taken with normal wide angle lenses (rectilinear) to fisheye images and visa-versa. Images recorded with scanning panoramic cameras can be converted into rectilinear or fisheye images. Images made with convex mirrors can also be remapped or converted into rectilinear or fisheye images, etc. PTools has an architectural photography application which was impossible a few years ago. It allows a photographer to go beyond the angle of view of available extreme wide angle rectilinear lenses. A photographer can shoot with a fisheye lens to achieve an extreme angle of view and then convert the fisheye image to a "regular" rectilinear image format. Scanning panoramic camera images can also be remapped as "regular" rectilinear images. This is truely a photographic break through. PTools can also be used to create cylindrical of spherical image formats for VR applications. PTools makes is possible to combine a variety of image types; rectilinear, fisheye, "scanning" panoramic images, and convex mirror images to create VR immersive images. The cylindrical images can be used with Apple's QuickTimeVR program and the spherical images can be used with LivePicture's spherical VR viewer. All this from Panorama Tools and it's free! Wow isn't it great, but someone has to try and spoil the party, don't they? Enter IPIX IPIX (www.ipix.com) have their own fisheye derived spherical VR system/software where they charge the user for every spherical VR created. IPIX have tried to intimidate Helmut Dersch by hiring a London law firm, Olswang. Paul Stevens of Olswang has sent Helmut the following email message: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Stevens To: der@fh-furtwangen.de Date: Thu, 08 Apr 1999 15:07:32 +0000 Subject: Interactive Pictures Corporation against Yourself We act on behalf of the Interactive Pictures Corporation, known as IPIX. As you are aware, our client operates a web site from 'www.ipix.com' ("IPIX Site") which hosts a number of panoramic photographs and also a number of software applications. In particular our client hosts a panoramic photograph ("Photograph") which is reproduced on a web site operated by yourself at www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/sphere_format/Spherical.html. ("Your Site") Our client owns the copyright which arises in the Photograph. Our client will be deemed to grant a licence to each viewer to reproduce this Photograph only insofar as such a licence is necessary for business efficacy. Consequently, the licence to reproduce the Photograph does not extend to reproducing the Photograph on a third party's web site and does not extend to authorising third parties to reproduce the Photograph from any web site other than the IPIX Site. It follows that your reproduction of the Photograph on Your Site and authorisation to third parties in the United Kingdom to further reproduce the Photograph constitutes a breach of this licence and therefore an infringement in the United Kingdom of our client's copyright in the Photograph. The Court of Appeal in the United Kingdom has made it clear that it does not matter that acts which constitute the infringement take place abroad. It is sufficient that the act of authorisation is performed within the United Kingdom. In addition, our client owns the copyright in the format it utilises to create IPIX panoramic images that can be viewed using the IPIX "browser plug-in". Your Site authorises and induces infringement of this copyright work in the UK. The Panorama Tools available from Your Site combined with the true construction of the Frequently Asked Questions and initial text on Your Site amounts to you purporting to grant the permission to UK individuals to infringe our client's copyright works in the IPIX format. The above torts cause and continue to cause our client unquantifiable and significant damage. The remedies available to our client include injunctive relief (both interlocutory and final), damages, an account of profits, legal costs and interest. If we do not receive the following undertakings from you by 12:00 UK time on Wednesday 14th April 1999 we will advise our client to issue proceedings without further notice to prevent any further dissemination of the material within the UK complained of: 1. that you will not, whether acting by your servants, agents or otherwise howsoever, now or in the future without the express permission of our client (in part or in whole) transmit or publish or authorise the transmission or publishing of any advertisement or other statement which has the effect of inducing, inciting, authorising or encouraging the copying of the IPIX image format or its successors within the United Kingdom; 2. that you will immediately remove and thereafter cease to (in part or in whole) transmit or publish or authorise the transmission or publishing of the Panorama Tools, text, pictures and Frequently Asked Questions currently being published on Your Site in relation to IPIX or its successors to individuals resident in the United Kingdom; 3. that within 7 days of providing this undertaking you will provide email addresses of all those persons who you are aware of who have downloaded the panorama Tools from Your Site; 4. that you will pay an agreed sum by way of damages or an account of profits or failing agreement of such sum that you will submit to and pay in accordance with an enquiry as to damages or an account of profits plus interest and our client's incurred costs in respect of such enquiry. In the event that you do not provide the above undertakings by the required time, kindly provide details of a firm of solicitors within England instructed to accept service of proceedings on your behalf or we will deem that you will accept service of proceedings by e-mail at this address and will seek the leave of the Court to do so. Yours faithfully Olswang ------------------------------------------- Paul Stevens, Partner Olswang 90 Long Acre London WC2E 9TT Tel. 0171 208 8976 Fax 0171 208 8800 E-mail pas@olswang.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hmmmmm......... cheeky stuff. All this directed at someone unselflessly and freely contributing to public knowledge. The following are observations and comments on this situation by Dan Slater: Date sent: Thu, 08 Apr 1999 17:42:41 -0700 From: Dan Slater Subject: Re: IPIX against Panorama_Tools To: der@fh-furtwangen.de Copies to: Quicktime-VR@public.lists.apple.com, panorama-l@sci.monash.edu.au, vr-issues@navmark.com Send reply to: dslater@ix.netcom.com Organization: NSI I was really quite stunned to hear of low class harassment of Helmut Dersch by the IPIX lawyers. Helmut has been one of the most imaginative, generous and creative members of the panoramic imaging and VR community. His development of Panorama Tools showed many that high quality image warping was possible. He gave this program freely to the panoramic / VR community. His other invention of micropanoramic imaging methods has been an inspiration to other of my own work. In the past, IPIX (then Omniview) had queried me for technical details about my own fisheye lens based Spherecam system ( http://www.nearfield.com/spherecam/ ). They found it quite interesting and were interested in building one of their own. Back then, I gladly sent them detailed photos and sample images for them to process, in addition to answering a variety of technical questions. I believe that they have since built both still and video versions of this. Later when they changed management and became IPIX, there seemed to be a major shift in philosophy. They have become quite litigious and have successfully sued and/or threatened a number of companies including Infinite Pictures, Live Picture and apparently others. With their legal attack on Helmut it appears that this continues to remain their business philosophy. I obviously regret the help I gave them way back when. IPIX seems to be a company that only takes but never gives. I believe that their prior lawsuits and threats against others were centered around their patents. IPIX US patents include: 5,313,306, 5,185,667, and at least two others. Some of their claims are quite broad, suggesting that any geometric remapping of a fisheye image is their invention. There is considerable prior art that would seem to invalidate these broad IPIX claims. Variations of fisheye image geometric remapping type systems have been used in aerospace, aerial photography, submarine periscopes, flight simulation, planetarium projection, etc. As an example, one system from the early 1970,s used a 6 mm Nikon fisheye lens in a F-111 aircraft to view wing extension simultaneously on both sides of the aircraft while also providing star image data. Two particularly relevant prior art references that would appear to completely invalidate the broad IPIX patent claims include: Ripley, D., DVI - A Digital Multimedia Technology, Communications of the ACM, Volume 32 Number 7 (July 1989) This paper describes an interactive computer based system that dynamically extracts perspective corrected views from images filmed with a Nikon 220° fisheye lens. Lippman, A., Movie Maps: An Application of the Optical Video Disc to Computer Graphics, Siggraph Conference Proceedings (1980) This second paper describes an early VR system that used either a set of 4 cameras or a single donut image camera that captured the complete road system in a small town. The viewer could travel down any of the roads in several different seasons and see perspective corrected views. The single camera system could use either the Nikon 6 mm f2.8 fisheye lens or the Kern Peri Apollar lens to record a full 360 degree horizontal view. Ripley (the author of the 1st paper) is a principle of Infinite Pictures that was sued by IPIX for patent infringment and lost with a million dollar judgement against him. To this day, I don't understand why, as both of these papers clearly describe prior art of undistorting fisheye images to extract "perspective corrected" views, etc. >From reading the letters that Helmut posted on his web site, it is quite apparent that the IPIX lawyers are interested in harassing him. If they are accusing him of copyright infringment, why would they want him to eliminate PanTools, the PanTools FAQ, etc. The IPIX file format is proprietary and unpublished but PanTools does not use it in any way whatsoever so there can not be an issue here. I don’t know the IPIX patent status in Germany but I would guess that it is not patented there. My guess is that IPIX does not like that Helmut’s Pan Tools can do high quality geometric image processing of fisheye images so they are harassing him in a 3rd country (England) via these other charges. Maybe next IPIX will go after Adobe Photoshop, followed by map making in general. Map makers have been warping fisheye (f theta) and other distorted images of the Earth to many other image formats for centuries. I really wish Helmut the best of luck and hope that he continues with his excellent ideas and software. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Rubin Message-Id: <199904162012.NAA06017@netcom19.netcom.com> Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:12:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: panarama tools back online The excellent photo panorama tools package is back online at http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch. It includes a GIMP version (relatively new; previous versions were for Photoshop). This is the package that IPIX threatened, with claims that IPIX owned the patent on using software to geometrically remap fisheye lens images to have normal perspective. Dersch had to shut down his web site for a while. Apparently IPIX backed down from its threats when someone sent Dersch articles from 1960's computer graphics magazines that described doing the same thing, showing IPIX's patent to almost certainly be invalid. IPIX had been very aggressive with that patent and maybe they will shut up now. They had actually won a lawsuit with it for incomprehensible reasons and were hoping to have an IPO soon. This incident has almost certainly lowered their value.