2021.09.30 14:36 "Re: [Tiff] Adobe is in full control of the TIFF standard (email thread with Scott Foshee): FYI", by Bob Friesenhahn

Since Adobe is the copyright holder for Adobe TIFF, you can not create a Geospatial TIFF standard that’s based on Adobe TIFF without a license from Adobe.

So they claim control of it, but refuse to do anything with it.

The *documents* that Adobe authored describing TIFF are copyrighted. It would be wrong to copy portions of those *documents* with a copyright grant by Adobe.

Multiple independent descriptions of the TIFF file format have been authored and published over the years without some sort of approval from Adobe. Indeed such works are protected by international laws.

There was already previous admission from Adobe that the term "TIFF" has been in common use for a great many years without any action from Adobe to defend it as their trademark and thus "TIFF" as a trademark is essentially no longer defensible.

Regardless, the term used in the new specification would like be "BigTIFF" which is clearly distinct from "TIFF".

It would be useful if Adobe was a party to the BigTIFF specification (although they played virtually no role in its original development) but this is not at all required.

Bob

Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
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