Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 02:47:09 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: On "intelligent people" and "dangers to BSD" Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.20.0003250230420.36561-100000@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <200003242018.NAA08726@usr09.primenet.com>
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> > > See <http://www.unisys.com/unisys/lzw/>. 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? > > No, not really. They are selling an idea, and the public is buying > it for non-logical reasons. Well I'm no lawyer (and know nothing of US law). But from what I can find from brief web searches, it seems that before the change in patent law, the lifetime for "utility patents" in the US was 17 years from date of issue, not 14 years. For "design patents" it was and continues to be 14 years from date of issue. LZW looks to me like a utility patent. http://www.heckel.org/congress/104cong/issues104/iss359.htm http://vpr2.admin.arizona.edu/ott/Guidebook/patbasic.htm (section "PATENT TERM") So it would seem that the LZW patent will expire only in 2002... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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