From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Mar 24 1:10: 7 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in (theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in [144.16.71.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0098137BC6C for ; Fri, 24 Mar 2000 01:09:35 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in) Received: (qmail 35254 invoked from network); 24 Mar 2000 09:08:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO theory3.physics.iisc.ernet.in) (rsidd@144.16.71.158) by theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in with SMTP; 24 Mar 2000 09:08:18 -0000 Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 14:38:17 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Terry Lambert Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: On "intelligent people" and "dangers to BSD" In-Reply-To: <200003232352.QAA03123@usr08.primenet.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > > > 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. > > It is 14 years from date of issue for patents filed before the > new patent law took effect. > > 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 > > See . 1999 was the last year > in which the patent was in effect. You will see that it has the > same patent number as the one I referenced previously. That page still says, in March 2000, More and more people are becoming aware that the reading and/or writing of GIF images requires a license to use Unisys patented Lempel Ziv Welch (LZW) data compression and decompression technology, including United States Patent No. 4,558,302, .... So are they wilfully deceiving the public? > PS: You are incorrect about when Unisys first attempted to > enforce the LZW patent; it was 1993. I didn't say that: I was talking about the $5000 fee for Web users of unlicensed GIF's. I'm not sure when they started that but it seemed to make news (burnallgifs.org, etc) only in 1999. As you say, that may have been a last-ditch effort to milk any remaining revenue from the patent. I know they tried enforcing it in various ways much earlier: I think even the 1980s they went after some kinds of compression software. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message