Re: GIF encoding can be free?
On Wed, Sep 22, 1999 at 08:31:08 -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
>The author claims that this implementation is free from patent problems.
I can't say I'm particularly impressed by it, it looks somewhat like an
attempt to put the blame elsewhere and possibly a confusion of copyright and
patents.
I read a more interesting remark about the GIF issue recently (most likely
on Slashdot) that there was another patent covering LZW compression (which
is the real problem in GIF encoding) by IBM. Some searching led me to the
comp.compression FAQ
(http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/section-6.html) stating:
:The IBM patent application was first filed three weeks before that of
:Unisys, but the US patent office failed to recognize that they covered the
:same algorithm. (The IBM patent is more general, but its claim 7 is exactly
:LZW.)
[The IBM patent number is given as 4,814,746; Unisys' as 4,558,302]
Parts of IBM are quite cooperative when it comes to free software (think
Haifa scheduler, Jikes, Secure Mailer aka Postfix), so perhaps it may be
possible to get IBM to object to Unisys' patent and then free it.
Ray
--
J.H.M. Dassen | RUMOUR Believe all you hear. Your world may
jdassen@wi.LeidenUniv.nl | not be a better one than the one the blocks
| live in but it'll be a sight more vivid.
| - The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan
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