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Re: Patent issues



On Feb 19, 2004, at 04:09, Roland Stigge wrote:

We don't know if the patent holder enforces the named patents next week.

No, we don't. But we do know that in the past, Unisys has been very active in enforcing its LZW ("GIF") patent. We assume that a patent holder who has previously litigated or even threatened litigation is far more likely to sue in the future.

I think many of those absurd patents would never actually be used (except, perhaps, as part of a "don't sue us, because we'll sue you worse" defense). We really don't have to worry about those. As you're no doubt well aware, if we did, we'd just have to give up. You can't write 'hello world' without infringing stupid patents.

Thankfully, Unisys haven't (yet) heard of the evil tricks one can do to make his patents last much longer than allowed by law. (See recent issues of Scientific American for examples).



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