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Will GIFs Be Free in 2003?

Posted by Cliff on from the patents-on-borrowed-time dept.

Ark42 asks: "Did the Unisys patent on LZW expire back on Dec 10, 2002? Does that mean we can all write GIF software royalty free now? From what I can gather, Unisys only lists patent number 4,558,302 for covering LZW, which was filed on Jun 20, 1983 and issued on Dec 10, 1985. According to this site patents filed after Jun 7, 1995 last 20 years from the file date, and patents on or before then last 17 years from the issue date. That means the LZW patent expired on Dec 10, 2002. Am I missing anything?" A deadline of 2003 was given in this earlier Slashdot article. Assuming .GIFs can't follow in the footsteps of Mickey Mouse, will the popular image format now be "web safe"?

5 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Let's hope so, by pb · · Score: 4, Funny

    Provided they aren't .GIFs of Mickey Mouse!

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    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
  2. Gifs want to be free by Cokelee · · Score: 1, Funny

    It's in the name. G(NU)IF.
    It would be very nice to openly use Gifs, especially considering the known issues when using transparent PNGs in IE.

  3. GIF by kruetz · · Score: 2, Funny

    GIF stands for GNU Is Free
    GNU stands for GIFs Never Used

    the cases IS, FREE, NEVER and USED are left as exercises for the motivated reader.

    --

    This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
    Who's got the whiteout?
  4. Unisys Mooning Day! by mcgroarty · · Score: 3, Funny
    I'd like to propose the idea of a mass Unisys mooning day to show the old dinosaur what we think of obvious patent abuse.

    When June '03 rolls around, how could we get as many asses in .gif format presented to Unisys? Someone with a lot of bandwidth wanna register 'fuckuni.com' or 'unidinosaur.com' for this purpose?

  5. Shhhhhhh..... by chriso11 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Don't give them any ideas....

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    No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.