LZW is Free! (Almost) [LWN.net]

LZW is Free! (Almost)

Posted Jun 12, 2003 14:43 UTC (Thu) by virtex (subscriber, #3019)
Parent article: LZW is Free! (Almost)

Unisys sat on the patent for nine years before it attempted to start collecting royalties on software that made use of LZW to create images in the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)

The only way Unisys could have ever expected to receive royalties from GIFs is by waiting. GIFs flourished because they were free. Unisys waited for GIFs to become popular and for people to become dependent on them before demanding royalties. If those royalties had been expected from the beginning, GIF would have been a complete failure.

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LZW is Free! (Almost)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 20:10 UTC (Fri) by im14u2c (subscriber, #5246) [Link]

Also, when did Unisys *acquire* the patent, anyway? The patent was actually issued to another company that Unisys acquired. My understanding is that Unisys didn't know that they held that patent right away.