The JPEG patent [LWN.net]

The JPEG patent

Posted Apr 29, 2004 3:52 UTC (Thu) by noise (guest, #2923)
Parent article: The JPEG patent

"It's only a matter of time before one of the suits has a serious impact on open source."

Oh but that time came years ago with the whole Unisys GIF/LZW fiasco. Look how many packages
had to drop GIF support. Software patents are bad for innovation, progress in software, and the
IT and software industries overall. The only thing they are good for is keeping shady lawyers in
business. I think we can all agree (IP lawyers aside) that abolishing software patents would be a
good thing for the world.

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The JPEG patent

Posted Apr 29, 2004 13:52 UTC (Thu) by jmshh (guest, #8257) [Link]

While I'm seeing all the other issues like you, there is one historic difference: a lot of projects threw out GIF, even when they didn't have to. The patent in this case applies to compression only, so decompression was never a problem.

Of cause, Unisys was not interested in making that difference too obvious...