On Fri, Jun 29, 2001 at 09:22:07AM +0200, Juergen Osterberg wrote:
> >
> > The true inequity of the Unisys patent is not 'obviousness'. It's
> > that they waited until every web site on the planet was using
> > GIF before they started to enforce it. That gave them the maximum
> > chance for royalties.
>
> regarding the LZW algorithm I was always wondering in which countries
> *outside* the US Unisys holds a patent on that.
>
> Obviously nowhere (yet) in Europe?! Someplace else? Havent found any
> information on that (such as on burnallgifs.org etc.)?
I've heard they're trying to enforce this patent on web providers who are
hosting GIF images. In my opinion, this is absolutely senseless, as they
only hold the patent on the *compression* (and decompression) algorithm.
But images are never compressed or restored on webservers, so providers
should say: We host anything here, it doesn't matter to us what it is.
In any case only the programs that make gifs or those that show them have
some relationship with the patent, right?
Well, anyway, if the software business is going on like this, soon we'll
have more lawyers than programmers in it!
But, have a lot of fun with GIMP programming, each feature is one step
forward!
happy coding,
Oliver Freyd
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