Hello,
I'm interested in image recognition. From what I have found I can say that SIFT algorithm is one of the best of the available solutions. However, SIFT is protected with a US patent, so I wonder if I can use this algorithm in my code? I could found many implementation of SIFT, some of them are open source, what makes me think that I should be able to use the existing implementations, but I'm still not sure as there is the patent issue.
Do you have any experience with this?
Many thanks!
Hi!
I think you may still be able to use the algorithm for non-commercial purposes. From what I have been able to find out commercial applications may require a license from the University of British Columbia but otherwise you should be fine.
It depends if the application is commercial or not.
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~lowe/keypoints/ says:
A license must be obtained from the University of British Columbia for any commercial applications. The sofware is protected under a US patent as listed below.