Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 12:15:20 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: Arun Sharma <adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: On "intelligent people" and "dangers to BSD" Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.20.0003231206170.31732-100000@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <200003230124.SAA28782@usr05.primenet.com>
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> > > actually the only thing affected by the patent, in any case, > > > since that is Unisys' (Terry Welch's, actually) contribution. > > > The LZ (Lempel-Ziv) decoder will decode both, and is not patent > > > protected. I would have to look it up, but I'm pretty sure > > > that patent has expired, unless it was submerged (filed but not > > > executed) prior to GIF images becoming common on the net. At > > > > I think I read that it's supposed to expire in 2003. > > Try 1999: > > http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US04558302__ Isn't the lifetime of a patent 20 years from date of filing? The above page says it was filed in June 1983. Besides, 1999 is the year Unisys suddenly started demanding $5000 from websites which use "unlicensed" GIF's. http://www.unisys.com/unisys/lzw/lzw-license.asp The page contains a "clarification" on licensing of GIF's dated September 1999. Their earlier announcement on the $5000 fee was not long before that. It seems a bit strange if the patents were supposed to expire the same year. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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