Nov 24th 2007 by http://dionpills. GIF patent dead at 20 || kuro5hin. I just heard some sad news on talk radio - GIF patent US4,558,302 was found expired in its patent office filing cabinet this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the internet community will miss it - even if you didn't enjoy the litigation, there's no denying its contribution to bandwidth conservation. for 20 years, the contents of the patent are entered into the Public Domain and may be used absolutely freely by anyone. Officially titled "High speed data compression and decompression apparatus
handling. He calls it LZW, after the names of the inventors, Lempel-Ziv-Welch. The article includes a justification for data compression, an overview of common methods, and a detailed explanation and runthrough of the LZW algorithm. is released by Spencer Thomas, after the LZW article was published but before LZW was patented. readers, Spencer decided to implement the LZW algorithm he read in the magazine, completely unaware that there was a patent pending on the technique. 10th December 1985>: LZW patent is granted. September 1986>: The Sperry Corporation (owners of the Sperry Research
AM EST (>4. 06/20/2003 11:49:03 AM EST (>5. 06/20/2003 12:00:05 PM EST (>5. Yet, on the 10th page (journal page 17) of Welch's paper, one can read : "The hardware and software implementations of LZW are Sperry proprietary". IANAL, so maybe there's a subtle distinction between proprietary and patented. I see Rusty's creation of Scoop as being as world changing an event as the fall of the Berlin wall. 06/19/2003 06:05:50 PM EST (>4. 06/19/2003 03:05:01 PM EST (>3. There's only one possible response. Ding Dong! The Witch is dead. Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead. Wake up - sleepy head,
rub your eyes, get out of bed. Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. Below - below - below. Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out. Ding Dong' the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low. Oh, and by the way, software patents are not valid in Canada, so this patent would only apply to hardware that does LZW compression. 06/19/2003 07:02:33 PM EST (>2. 06/19/2003 10:37:20 PM EST (>4. How much money did Unisys actually make from this? Especially from software developers. I hope this fucking hurts, you assholes. Huzzah for all internet users everywhere (except Unisys employees, who
large numbers of people built GIF support into their software and websites without knowledge that they were on thin ice. Now, I suppose Unisys could have done a better job educating people, but the rules of patents state that's not their job. If anything, the real outrage should be at the online world's mostly indifferent attitude towards the GIF problem. 20 June 2003 should have passed without note. True up to a point. 06/20/2003 11:03:41 AM EST (>4. 06/21/2003 07:09:17 PM EST (>1. The RIAA's logo on their homepage is a gif. I wonder if they are paying to use it- yeah, right. Too bad
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are licensed. The GIF format becomes even more popular. The GIF format becomes even more popular. The GIF format becomes even more popular. The GIF format becomes even more popular. The GIF format becomes even more popular. So the US patent has expired. covers Germany, France, Britain and Italy and expires on the 18th June 2004. expires on the 6th June 2004. This creates an interesting legal situation where LZW-based sofware is legal to distribute in the United States, but risks patent infringement claims in or when exported to Europe, Canada and Japan. hasn't diminished GIF's popularity
GIFs into an entirely new medium that had little need for backward compatibility. In 1995, Unisys finally published a royalty sheet, exempting "non-commercial" software. By now most folks had forotton the controversy. In 1999, Unisys finally realized the web had become commercialized and got around to agressively enforcing their patent. In my view, the main 'controversy' about this whole thing is that (A) The GIF format wasn't replaced forthright back in 1990, and (B) The avalanche of new online users from 1995-1999 were not made aware of the patent issues surrounding GIF. Thus
have to pry the GIFs from my cold, dead fingers. i always found it amusing that the other side used gifs instead of pngs despite bleating about how bad patents were. 06/19/2003 05:18:36 AM EST (>4. 06/19/2003 06:01:53 AM EST (>4. 06/19/2003 01:21:30 PM EST (>5. 06/19/2003 05:05:53 PM EST (>3. 06/19/2003 05:59:40 AM EST (>3. 06/19/2003 06:38:05 PM EST (>3. 06/19/2003 01:38:09 PM EST (>2. invented new compression techniques>, had them stolen by patent, and gave up the field. 06/19/2003 08:43:12 AM EST (>3. 06/19/2003 10:23:18 AM EST (>3. I've been storing all my kiddie porn as gifs,
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