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GIF Patent Prepares to Expire
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."
As seen on the Kuro5hin article, there are still patents in other countries (Japan, Canada, England, etc.) that don't expire until next year.
for professional image editing, not for all image editing.