Re: [Openexr-devel] Adobe's Digital Negative Format

[Derek Gerstmann]

Weston Houghton wrote:

> I realize that at this point it is beside the point, but isn't DNG based 
> on TIFF, of which Adobe (Aldus) still owns a number of patents related 
> to? While perhaps not more proprietary, doesn't that make DNG slightly 
> more dangerous to deal with?

I checked the USPTO came up with two unrelated patents for TIFF filed by
ADOBE, and zero patents for TIFF filed by ALDUS (which I found
surprising).

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

Furthermore, I could not find any active TIFF trademarks on file by
either Adobe or Aldus, and none that were related to imaging.

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=6m1633.1.1&p_search=searchstr&Search+History=&p_L=100&p_plural=no&p_s_PARA1=TIFF&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24ALL&expr=PARA1+or+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA2%24ALL&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query

Finally, I failed to find anything on DNG or Digital Negatives
filed by ADOBE.  I'm starting to wonder about the USPTO search
engine and/or my search methods .....

So unless I missed something (??), only TIFFs which are encoded
(LZW/RLE/etc) present possible patent issues.

> Just curious. that and the yearly small modifications that Adobe seems 
> to enjoy making to TIFF.

Arguably, this is a fundamental issue (not necessarily bad) with
the flexibility of TIFF.

Niles Ritter also maintains an Unofficial TIFF FAQ, which has
been helpful in the past for finding information:

        http://home.earthlink.net/~ritter/tiff/

...

Hope some of that helps....

-[dg]
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Derek Gerstmann                             address@hidden
MSc Computer Animation                   NCCA - Bournemouth University
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