GIF Slips Away From Unisys; Your Move, IBM

Twenty years ago, Terry Welch's improvement on Lempel-Ziv compression appeared in IEEE Computer magazine. The authors of unix 'compress' and the GIF standard incorporated that algorithm without realizing it was patent-pending. When the submarine patent surfaced ten years later, its new owner Unisys intimidated developers and web authors into moving away from GIFs, inspiring the creation of a better standard, though sadly still a less popular one. Today, July 7, 2004, Unisys's last LZW patent (in Canada) expires, leaving GIF once again free... almost. See, there's the small matter of IBM's patent, granted on the same algorithm, which is valid for another two years. That still has a chilling effect on GIF development, though the consensus seems to be that IBM would lose any court action it tried to bring. So how about it, IBM? You've got nothing to lose! Want to make a lot of geeks happy and release that final patent into the public domain?

Comments

Corporate FUD

[RAMMS EIN]

The advertisement I got at the top of the article is a horrible example of corporate FUD:

Older PCs may be more vulnerable to viruses. Don't get caught with your guard down. Upgrade to a new HP Business Desktop dc 5000 featuring the Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology today. And see how HP client management software can protect your IT environment.

I know this is off-topic, I just had to say it.

Yuck. If I wasn't already shunning HP, I would start now.