Internet Pictures Corporation (Nasdaq: IPIX - news), the global leader in mission-critical imaging solutions, today announced that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a patent infringement jury verdict of $1 million against Infinite Pictures, Inc (DBA iMove, Inc.). The court confirmed iPIX's patent rights covering the transformation of fisheye, equirectangular or equivalent photographic images into perspective corrected immersive images.

iPIX sued Infinite Pictures, Inc. in September 2000 for infringement of its patent (U.S. Patent 5,185,667) covering a technique for converting photographic ``fish eye'' images into a distortion corrected view, allowing a user to ``step inside'' and navigate within an image. The jury held the iPIX patent valid and infringed and awarded iPIX $1 million in damages. Infinite Pictures appealed the decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The appeals court affirmed in all respects the jury's verdict and held that Infinite Pictures' SmoothMove Panorama Web Builder, which aligned and seamed three images into a 360-degree panorama image in an equirectangular format, infringed the iPIX patent.

``What is particularly important about the holding of the court is that it agreed with iPIX's theory of infringement based on the doctrine of equivalents,'' said Robert F. Altherr, Jr., attorney for Banner & Witcoff who represented iPIX. ``The court agreed that SmoothMove's equirectangular panorama file, though not an image obtained directly from a fisheye lens camera, was substantially similar to it, and that decision was upheld on appeal.''

In addition to the award of $1 million in damages, Infinite Pictures is prevented from marketing products based on the infringing technology.

Published: December 27, 2001

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