Apple Patent Blocking PNG Development

Daniel writes: "Apple has a patent (U.S. Patent No. 5,379,129) on compositing a source and destination image using a mask image. This patent appears to read on alpha channel transparency, which the PNG and MNG file formats use. APPLE has declared in their patent statement to the Scalable Vector Graphics Working Group that their patent is only available for RAND Licensing. Since this patent appears to read on the PNG file format, Apple is hampering work on the PNG and MNG file formats. Perhaps Apple would like to clarify this situation by explicitly stating that this patent does not cover the PNG and MNG file formats or by RF Licensing their patent to the PNG and MNG development groups. Alternatively, the PNG and MNG developers are asking people to submit prior art in order to invalidate Apple's patent. SGI in particular appears to have prior art with their 'blendfunction.' Make sure the prior art you submit is older than May 08, 1992, the filing date of Apple's patent."

Good luck on that one

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

"This patent appears to read on alpha channel transparency"

So, is Apple going to go after the Photoshop or Gimp people ? that would really make them look like an ass ...

Re:Hmmm

[Rob Kaper]

Sometimes this means doing cool things, like open-sourcing the core of their new OS.

As far as I know, BSD was already open in various incarnations. But the next time I build a proprietary layer above an open source project, I'll hire you for marketing so I can claim I was the one that made the core open source in the first place! :-)

Re:Outdated, irrelevant facts w/o more info

[Gogo Dodo]

You knew this story was going to get posted. It has all of the hallmarks of an automatic post: big, bad public company that doesn't do GPL very well (+2 for Apple, +5 for MS) sues (+1) GPL group (+1) over patent (+5). Ding! Ding! Ding! Automatic post...

The only thing missing is the Linux reference.

Re:You think THAT's bad...

[AbsoluteRelativity]

> I fully support this kind of use of intellectual property. If I create something and someone else is making money directly from my creation, I should profit as well.

Then you wont mind going to hell, when God sees you made money off of his creations with out giving him royalities. >)

Re:What a pain in the ass...

[snake_dad]

Noooo... Don't do it! this technique is patented by some company named "Reknob"!

Another "funny" Apple patent, #6,317,787

[SLi]

I find this one (owned by Apple) hilarious too, granted November 13, 2001:

System and method for analyzing web-server log files

A method for analyzing traffic data generated by a plurality of web servers, which host a single web site. The site is mirrored on each server. A traffic data hit is generated responsive to each access of one of the servers. The hit includes data representing the time of the access. Each data hit is stored in a log file on the server accessed. The first-stored data hit is read from each server. Each of the read data hits are compared, and the oldest data hit is passed to a log file analyzer. The next-stored data hit is read from the server from which the passed data hit was read, and a second comparison is performed on the read data hits, with the oldest data hit being passed to the log file analyzer. This process continues until all of the data hits are read, compared, and passed to the log file analyzer. This results in passing all of the data hits to the log file analyzer in the chronological order in which the hits were generated.

Re:You think THAT's bad...

[Lars T.]

Well, not only would his patent(s) have run out by now (if he had some - it doesn't say "On the seventh day he created the patent office and filed patent #000000001 "Creation"), he also told man to exploit his creation any way he could.