Possible patent violation?

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:23:25PM +0100, Jo Shields wrote:
> Package affected: autopano-sift
> 
> Patent involved: US6711293 (Method and apparatus for identifying scale
> invariant features in an image and use of same for locating an object in
> an image)
> 
> Description: This is an app to glue multiple photos together into large
> (panoramic) pictures, using the SIFT algorithm
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-invariant_feature_transform). The
> SIFT patent seems sufficiently enforced that the upstream site has a big
> red warning box about it
> (http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~nowozin/autopano-sift/). This was brought
> to the attention of the Mono team via a bug report
> (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/autopano-sift/+bug/550255). 
> 
> As a patent issue, I would like the Technical Board to assess whether
> this software should remain in the archive.

Thanks for making us aware of this issue.  I've put it on the agenda to
discuss at the next TB meeting.  You can consider the matter to be in our
hands.

-- 
 - mdz