On 5/16/05, Svend Meyland Nicolaisen <news@...> wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Firebird-Architect@yahoogroups.com
> > [mailto:Firebird-Architect@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
> > Claudio Valderrama C.
> > Sent: 16. maj 2005 11:25
> > To: Firebird-Architect@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: RE: [Firebird-Architect] Re: Record Encoding
> >
> > Marius Popa wrote:
> > > On 5/13/05, Jim Starkey wrote:
> > >>>
> > >> LZW, friends, and relations is patented technology, i.e. forbidden
> > >> fruit unless you can find a donor to buy a Unisys license.
> > And since
> > >> IBM also has a parent that comflicts with th Unisys, you probably
> > >> need a license from them, too.
> > >
> > > well patent expired
> > > http://www.google.com/search?q=lzw+patent+expired
> > >
> > > LZW is used in gif compression (that is why i know it can
> > be used now)
> >
> > Did you read one of the links?
> >
> > Unisys Corporation holds and has patents pending on a number
> > of improvements on the inventions claimed in the
> > above-expired patents. Information on these improvement
> > patents and terms under which they may be licensed can be
> > obtained by contacting the following...
> >
>
> Isn't that just patents on the improvements and not on LZW itself? I read it
> as you can create GIF's and otherwise use the basic LZW compression freely
> now.

is expired for good
"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)"

took it from this page - gif had the same legal problems

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


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developer flamerobin.org