This spat isn't as sudden as it might seem. iPIX's lawyers have been sending nastygrams to Helmut Dersch, who wrote a graphics plugin that iPIX doesn't like much, for years: http://vr.albury.net.au/~kathyw/EyePics/Spherical2.html Some English-language background on the latest: http://www.virtualproperties.com/noipix/noipix.html#anchor10760184 http://caroling.holyoak.com/Access/path/IPIXguillaumeENG.html Dersch's site is now offline: http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/ "The Panorama Tools Website is temporarily closed. Please check again later." Background on iPix patent claims: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,20891,00.html "IPIX has a patented technique that allows VR photographers to take wide-angle photographs and stitch them together into 3-D panoramas. Net surfers can "step into" these pictures and look around." More: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-2167743.html?tag=st.ne.1430735..ni http://www.newsbytes.com/news/00/155762.html -Declan >-------- Original Message -------- >Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 16:46:15 +0200 (CEST) >From: PILCH Hartmut <phmat_private> > >Under > > http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/daa-07.06.01-002/ > http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch > http://www.ipix.com > http://www.cityscope.de/pp3n/index.html > >http://listserv.fh-furtwangen.de/cgi-bin/lwgate/cgi/lwgate-en-proj.cgi/PROJ-IMIM/archives/proj-imim.archive.0106/date/article-21.html > >you can find some info in german about the latest development about the >Dersch v. iPIX case, see also > > http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/pikta/xrani/ipix/ > (to be updated) > >A German math professor has backed down by removing his free image >processing software from the web at least temporarily due to threats >from iPIX Inc., a company that has pursued swpats agressively >through US courts. > >The strange thing about this is that Dersch is backing down although the >claims from iPIX are based only on US patents. It seems that even >without further extensions of the Hague Convention jurisdictions are >already sufficiently blurred to allow US patents to terrorise European >software developpers who are only publishing web pages without pursuing >any business activities in the US. > >-- >Hartmut Pilch >http://phm.ffii.org/ >Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation >http://swpat.ffii.org/ >79100 signatures against software patents >http://petition.eurolinux.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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