mainSavannah Administration - Support: sr #105278, Is Unisys GIF patent expired?

 
 

sr #105278: Is Unisys GIF patent expired?

Submitter:  Wei Mingzhi <Whistler>
Submitted:  Tue 04 Apr 2006 07:51:52 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  Savannah website Priority:  5 - Normal
Severity:  2 - Minor Status:  Done
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  mjflick
Operating System:  None Open/Closed:  Closed
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Wed 05 Apr 2006 03:08:30 PM UTC, comment #1: 

I'd recommend a quick readover of your quote:

> The U.S. IBM patent expires 11 August 2006, (we are still searching the databases of other countries).


From the philosophy page:

> Even if Unisys really did give permission for free software to
> generate GIFs, we would still have to deal with the IBM patent.
> Both the IBM and the Unisys patents cover the same
> "invention"--the LZW compression algorithm. (This could reflect
> an error on the part of the US Patent and Trademark Office, which
> is famous for incompetence and poor judgment.)

Michael J. Flickinger <mjflick>
Tue 04 Apr 2006 07:51:52 AM UTC, original submission:  

Quoted from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html:

We were able to search the patent databases of the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union. The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, in Europe it expired on 18 June 2004, in Japan patent expired on 20 June 2004 and in Canada it expired on 7 July 2004. The U.S. IBM patent expires 11 August 2006, (we are still searching the databases of other countries).

...and I don't think it's still necessary to restrict gif files, because it seems to have expired for years.

Wei Mingzhi <Whistler>

 

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Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
2006-04-05 mjflick StatusNone Done
    Assigned toNone mjflick
    Open/ClosedOpen Closed

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