Patent Issues with JPEG-2000

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silty83
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Patent Issues with JPEG-2000

Post by silty83 »

Hi,

I'm new to IM but I was hoping to use it with JPEG-2000 images and yet I see that JPEG-2000 is considered by some to be patent encumbered. If that's the case then how can it be part of ImageMagick? Is this a royalty free implementation?

Thanks
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glennrp
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Re: Patent Issues with JPEG-2000

Post by glennrp »

JPEG-2000 is indeed encumbered by some patents but
most if not all rights have been waived (but this fact
is not guaranteed).

See http://www.jpeg.org/jpeg2000/j2kpart1.html

We use jasper which is an open source implementation.
See LICENSE within the jasper delegate source.
silty83
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Re: Patent Issues with JPEG-2000

Post by silty83 »

Thanks. I knew Jasper was a dependency but I didn't know it was the package providing JPEG-2000 support. Net result is that it seems there is a small but non-zero risk to using it.
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magick
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Re: Patent Issues with JPEG-2000

Post by magick »

JPEG-2000 and a delegate library, Jasper, that reads / writes the JPEG-2000 image format, are not part of ImageMagick so it does not taint the ImageMagick license. Instead, ImageMagick has a module that can interface with the Jasper library. This interface is governed by the ImageMagick license. Jasper has a separate license and you must accept its license in order to utilize it. The JPEG-2000 image format has its own license and possibly it may infringe some patents if you use it.
turtletooth
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Re: Patent Issues with JPEG-2000

Post by turtletooth »

Not to raise a thread from the dead, but how hard would it be to build an imagemagick without jpeg2000 support?
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fmw42
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Re: Patent Issues with JPEG-2000

Post by fmw42 »

Current imagemagick uses OpenJPEG and not Jasper to use JP2000. I believe that if you do not have OpenJPG installed, IM will not use. Alternately, you can disable it with a compile flag.

Code: Select all

--without-jp2	disable JPEG v2 support.
See http://www.imagemagick.org/script/advan ... lation.php
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