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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
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
for Unisys to try to extend the patent. I mean hell, if the copyright to Mickey Mouse can be extended then there's no way they'd let a patent quietly die. 06/19/2003 05:22:31 PM EST (>3. 06/19/2003 07:06:21 PM EST (>1. 06/19/2003 10:03:41 PM EST (>4. This one's for you, ICI. Your vote (1) was recorded. This story currently has a total score of 95. Your vote put this story over the threshold, and it should now appear on the front page. 06/19/2003 11:34:37 AM EST (>5. 06/20/2003 02:36:58 AM EST (>4. 06/20/2003 10:43:11 AM EST (>5. 06/20/2003 10:48:41 AM EST (>3. 06/20/2003 11:08:35
and method", it is more commonly known as the LZW patent or Unisys's GIF tax. Don't buy ram at Apple. You can save big money when you buy your memory at MacMemoryStore. Most popular compression techniques build on this technique and most archivers (e. ZIP, ZOO, ARC, gzip, LhA, CAB, Arj, RAR, StuffIt) include it in their compression methods. I only mention this to tell you it's unrelated to LZ78 or LZW. [US4,464,650]>), but the LZW derivative is widely used. Terry Welch has been working for the Sperry Research Center and invents a derivative of LZ78 with much simplified, faster dictionary
knowledge in about 1990, leading to a huge uproar in the online world. Some paniced BBS sysops even took their GIF p0rn offline out of fear. CompuServe or Unisys tried to queal the flames by announcing that there would be no "GIF Tax" -- only encoding/decoding software would be covered; and that interested parties should contact them. As this only affected software developers, there was a huge sign of relief among users. Adobe and other image software makers licenced LZW in 1990-1. Unisys must have said more than "nothing" to them at this time. In 1993, Mosaic spread
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