Apparently in the US a patent has been lodged by Mr. Peter Wolf of Photocrazy.com, in which Peter Wolf claims to have invented/discovered the process of tagging photos, which are subsequently uploaded to the internet whereby potential customers can search for photos by inputting an identifiable reference. Think of sports events photography, photographing runners or cyclists, tagging their photos with their bib number, whereby entering the bib number into a search returns their photos.

The patents Peter Wolf refers to can be found here and here.

Needless to say, I received correspondence from Peter Wolf claiming that I was violating his patent, that a licence agreement can be entered into.

My host is Smugmug and checking their terms and conditions reference is made to Peter Wolf of Photocrazy.com at the very end. I'm reproducing the relevant Smugmug reference here;

Notice for Professional Account holders: Uploading more than 500 photographs of participants in a single sporting event may require a License from PhotoCrazy, Inc. To avoid patent infringement, please contact:
PhotoCrazy, Inc.
Attn: Peter Wolf
509 Raindance Street
Thousand Oaks, California 91360-1219
Email: peter@photocrazy.com
With my little research to date, I believe this patent has only been filed in the US and Japan. I don't think it has been filed here in Australia.

I can post a copy of the email I received from Peter Wolf, if people are interested.

A question that comes to mind at the moment is what relevance is this to Australia? Has anyone from Oz come across this issue?