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The patentsThe patentsPosted Aug 7, 2003 22:30 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599)In reply to: The patents by sbergman27 Parent article: A brief look at IBM's counterclaims I don't really see where lempel-ziv is absolutely crucial to Open Server. It uses the older unix compress/uncompress. You have that backwards. compress(1) uses LZW, which is claim 7 of IBM's patent. Since Unisys also patented LZW and IBM apparently was content to let them reap the royalties for more than a decade, the fact that IBM's patent is a continuation of an application with a priority date three weeks earlier than Unisys's application apparently isn't relevant--i.e., it appears that claim 7 is unenforceable, or at least questionable enough that IBM has never chosen to press the issue. But there are a lot of other claims in there, and it's conceivable that SCO really is touching some of those. See the comp.compression FAQ for details. (Note that none of this has ever been tested in court, TTBOMK, so treat the FAQ as expert opinion rather than case law.) Greg
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