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<H1>JBIG1 patent information</H1>
<P>by Markus Kuhn
<P>For many years, the doubts about the patent situation have
prevented the JBIG1 standard from becoming widely used on the
Internet (e.g., not a single web browser has support for it
integrated). As the author of a <A
HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/jbigkit/">freely available JBIG1
implementation</A>, I'm investigating the current patent license
requirements for the JBIG1 standard, and this page summarizes what I
have found out so far.
<H2>Patent list</H2>
<P><A HREF="JBIG-patents.pdf">Annex E</A> of the JBIG1 standard (<A
HREF="http://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?type=folders&paren
t=T-REC-T.82">ITU-T Recommendation T.82(1993)</A> and <A
HREF="http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUM
BER=19498&ICS1=35&ICS2=40&ICS3=">International Standard
ISO/IEC 1154 4:1993</A>), lists the following patents and says that a
license for these might be required to implement the standard:</P>
<TABLE BORDER=1 CELLPADDING=5>
<TR><TH>Owner<TH>Title<TH>Number<TH>publication date<TH>notes
<TR><TD><A HREF="http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/">IBM</A><TD>A method and means for pipeline decoding of the high to low order pairwise combined digits of a decodable set of relatively shifted finite number of strings<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04295125__">US 4295125</A><TD>1981-10-13
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>A method and means for carry-over control in a high order to low order combining of digits of a decodable set of relatively shifted finite number strings<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04463342__">US 4463342</A><TD>1984-07-31
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>High-speed arithmetic compression using concurrent value updating<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04467317__">US 4467317</A><TD>1984-08-21
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>Method and means for arithmetic coding using a reduced number of operations<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04286256__">US 4286256</A><TD>1981-08-25
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>A multiplication-free multi-alphabet arithmetic code<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04652856__">US 4652856<TD>1986-02-04
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>Symmetrical adaptive data compression/decompression system<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04633490__">US 4633490</A><TD>1986-12-30
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>Arithmetic coding data compression/de-compression by selectively employed, diverse arithmetic encoders and decoders<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04891643__">US 4891643</A><TD>1990-01-02
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>System for compression bi-level data<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04901363__">US 4901363</A><TD>1990-02-13
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>Arithmetic coding encoder and decoder system<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04905297__">US 4905297</A><TD>1990-02-27
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>Probability adaptation for arithmetic coders<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04935882__">US 4935882</A><TD>1990-06-19
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>Probability adaptation for arithmetic coders<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05099440__">US 5099440</A><TD>1992-03-24
<TR><TD>IBM<TD>Method and apparatus for processing pel signals of an image<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04982292__">US 4982292</A><TD>1991-01-01
<TR><TD>AT&T<TD>Progressive transmission of high resolution two-tone facsimile images<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04870497__">US 4870497</A><TD>1989-09-26
<TR><TD>AT&T<TD>Edge decomposition for the transmission of high resolution facsimile images<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04873577__">US 4873577</A><TD>1989-10-10
<TR><TD>AT&T<TD>Adaptive probability estimator for entropy encoder/decoder<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05025258__">US 5025258</A><TD>1991-06-18
<TR><TD>AT&T<TD>Efficient encoding/decoding in the decomposition and recomposition of a high resolution image utilizing its low resolution replica<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04979049__">US 4979049</A><TD>1990-12-18
<TR><TD>AT&T<TD>Efficient encoding/decoding in the decomposition and recomposition of a high resolution image utilizing pixel clusters<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05031053__">US 5031053</A><TD>1991-07-09
<TR><TD>AT&T<TD>Entropy encoder/decoder including a context extractor<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05023611__">US 5023611</A><TD>1991-06-11
<TR><TD>AT&T<TD>Method and apparatus for carry-over control in arithmetic entropy coding<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04973961__">US 4973961</A><TD>1990-11-27
<TR><TD>KDD<TD>Methods for reduced-sized images<TD>JP Appl. 63-212 432<TD>1990-03-02<TD>JP 02-062164
<TR><TD>KDD<TD>Image reduction system<TD>JP Appl. 1-167 033<TD>pending<TD>joint with Canon
<TR><TD>Mitsubishi<TD>Facsimile encoding communication system<TD><A HREF="http://www.delphion.com/patlist?ttl_selected=CHECKED&isd_selected=CHECKED&icnt=JP&patent_number=1251403">JP 1251403</A><TD>1984-07-06<TD>wrong number?
<TR><TD>Mitsubishi<TD>Encoding method<TD><TD>pending
<TR><TD>Canon<TD>Image reduction system<TD>JP Appl. 1-167 033<TD>pending<TD>joint with KDD
</TABLE>
<P>The owners of the above patents have filed with the ISO and ITU a
statement of willingness to grant a license under these rights on
reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions to applications
desiring to obtain such a license. These statements are recorded in
the <A HREF="http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/dbase/patent/">ITU Patents
Database</A>.
<P>JBIG-KIT comes without any patent licence. I do not know for sure,
which patents still affect which use of JBIG in which country (most of
the ones listed have already expired anyway). The most important
patents are the ones owned by IBM on the QM coder. Some of the other
patents can be avoided by disabling progressive coding. In some
countries, non-commercial and research use of patented ideas does not
require a license anyway.
<H2>Contacts</H2>
<P>Annex E of JBIG1 also provides contact addresses for patent information:
<BLOCKQUOTE><PRE>
Director, Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (formerly CCITT)
International Telecommunication Union
Place des Nations
CH-1211 Gen�ve 20
Switzerland
Tel: +41 (22) 730 5111
Fax: +41 (22) 730 5853
ITTF
International Organization for Standardization
1, rue de Varemb�
CH-1211 Gen�ve 20
Switzerland
Tel: +41 (22) 734 0150
Fax: +41 (22) 733 3843
Program Manager
Licensing Intellectual Property and Licensing Services
IBM Corporation
208 Harbor Drive
P.O. Box 10501
Stamford, Connecticut 08904-2501
Tel: +1 (203) 973 7935
Fax: +1 (203) 973 7981
or +1 (203) 973 7982
Mitsubishi Electric Corp.
Intellectual Property License Department
1-2-3 Morunouchi, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100
Japan
Tel: +81 (3) 3218 3465
Fax: +81 (3) 3215 3842
International Affairs Department
Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co. Ltd.
3-2 Nishishinjuku 2-chome Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 163
Japan
Tel: +81 (3) 3347 6457
Tel: +81 (3) 3347 6470
AT&T Intellectual Property Division Manager
Room 3A21
10 Independence Blvd. Warren, NJ 07059
USA
Tel: +1 (908) 580 5392
Fax: +1 (908) 580 6355
Senior General Manager
Corporate Intellectual Property and Legal Headquarters
Canon Inc.
30-2 Shimomaruko 3-chome
Ohta-ku, Tokyo 146
Japan
Tel: +81 (3) 3758 2111
Fax: +81 (3) 3756 0947
</PRE></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>Information received from these so far:
<UL>
<LI>2000-08-01: All the JBIG1 related AT&T patents are now owned
by Lucent Technologies and can be licensed for a lump sum of 15000
USD. For more information and a patent license agreement, contact
Larry Greenberg (greenberg at lucent.com), Jim Finnegan, or Peter
Crefeld (pcrefeld at lucent.com) at Lucent. They told me that they
have made a general commitment to Standards Bodies that they will be
non-discriminatory in this licensing, therefore they can't offer a
free license for non-commercial implementations or applications.
</UL>
<H2>JBIG2 license waiver</H2>
<P>I recently read with great interest in Annex I of the final draft
for <A HREF="http://www.jpeg.org/jbigpt2.html">JBIG2</A> (ISO/IEC FCD
14492, <A
HREF="http://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?type=folders&lang=e&parent=T-REC-T.88">ITU-T
T.88</A>) that IBM has agreed to license the arithmetic encoding
patents free of charge to JBIG2 implementors. Apparently, the IBM IPR
statement provided for JPEG2000 (ISO/IEC 15444 and ITU-T T.800) and
JBIG2 allowed no-royalty use of the patents on a certain list for "any
WG1 standard", which refers to the ISO/IEC working group that
comprises both JBIG and JPEG. It's possible that this means that IBM
will allow royalty-free use of the patents on that list for JBIG1 as
well, but I don't know yet whether that has been the intention or
effect.
<P>I hope that this waiver therefore can also be applied to JBIG1
implementations, as I would love to be able to add to the
documentation of my package a statement saying that its use will not
require a patent license (or at least not for the non-progressive
modes). I am still struggling to find a competent source to confirm
that this is indeed the case.
<P>Thanks to Sebestyen Istvan and William Rucklidge from the JPEG/JBIG
committee (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1 and ITU-T SG8) for helpful
information.
<P><A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/">Markus Kuhn</A>
<BR><SMALL>created 2002-07-29 -- last modified 2002-07-29 --
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/jbigkit/patents.html</SMALL>
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