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GIF Patent Prepares to Expire

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the all-skate-everyone-skate dept.

pajamacore writes "It's worth noting that 20 June 2003 is GIF Liberation Day, the day on which US Patent 4,558,302 expires. The patent describes the LZW compression algorithm used in .gif files. That said, maybe the prices of image editing applications will drop slightly when corporations don't have to pay fees to Unisys."

1 of 632 comments (clear)

  1. LZW should never have been patentable by mholt108 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I mean it is like patenting a method of fitting matches into a matchbox!

    How techincally advanced is it to say 12 greenish dots now 14 reddish dots etc.

    Just plain dumb really - infantile technology compared to JPG.

    It does one thing really well though - i use Tiffs a lot and it really does decrease the size of most tiffs - but that doesnt make it great technology.