Hi there,

I don't want to spoil the fun with your software, but as a web developer in germany I was wondering how save it would be to make and sell complete 360 degree panoramas using 2 fisheye pics with panoweaver.

I have a large hotel group waiting who want to use several hundret panos and display them on their website. This is a large international company and I am certain that IPIX will (at least by reading here ;) get knowledge of these panoramas beeing used on their website (using Helmut Dersch's applet).

I have no knowledge that IPIX has a legal patent here in germany - all I read ist that they don't.

So makers of Panoweaver please prove to me (and your fellow forum readers) that it's save to use Panoweaver and Dersch's applet on commercial websites.

Thank you.

Brandon

Thats interesting because IPIX lost to Oxaal Ford recently in a law suit.  IPIX had to get a NON exclusive license from Ford to continue to sell their product.  I and others would be interested for no other reason but as a future reference, in your source information regarding the German patent.

Thanks in advance.

If you type in "ipix germany patent" in yahoo, you'll get a list of sites.

This is weird though, so bear with me:

CLick on the "panoguide.com - Panoweaver v2.0"

or

http://www.panoguide.com/software/reviews/panoweaver_v20.html

In the yahoo descrition of the link, it says "If you live in a country in which iPIX has registered a patent for this technique (this includes the USA, Germany and many other countries) you should not use ... "

but if you to the page, you can't find the text on the site. It used to be there, but is now gone.

Wait,.. can panoweaver be used for comercial virtual tours in the USA? Are there any legal problems? or could there be any legal problems from "ipix" ?

Thanks,

-ck 

"yowsiang" asks, " ... so how will anyone knows what software you use to stitch ...?"

As we al know, a right-click on the webpage and a left-click on "view source" is all it takes to reveal the source code for that page, including all the code for the panorama applet.  Even if you remove all references to Panoweaver or easypano, the applet will still contain

                    archive = "ptviewer.jar" code = "ptviewer.class"

By studying the applet code, its not too difficult to determine which software was used to build the panorama.

Having said that just sparked an idea!  Hey Panorama Technology- how about adding a built-in uploader with encryption on uploading-  ???

Wait,.. can panoweaver be used for comercial virtual tours in the USA? Are there any legal problems? or could there be any legal problems from "ipix" ?

It's my understanding that only the spherical build, using ptviewer, may violate the copyright of that iP_X company (I think the forum rules warn against getting into discussion against other companies.  Say, that reminds me, where are those forum rules that appeared when we joined this forum?  Does anyone know how to access them, 'cause I can't find any access to them???).  But I digress.  Back to my "understanding", which I do not profess to be Gospel (or even "gospel")- only the way I think things are.  I think the cubic build does not risk copyright infringement.  While the panorama is still built using only two fisheye hemispheres, that process utilizes Apple's QuickTime technology, which does not violate iP_X copyrights.

Since I hate to spread false information, if anyone out there knows differently, please advise.