“Are you ready for Burn All GIFs Day?
“The event, which so far isn’t scheduled for an actual date, was
started in anger over the discovery that Unisys is making a new
effort to extract royalties out of US patent 4,558,302, commonly
known as the LZW compression method.”
“Of course, this means that GIFs are off-limits to open source
users…”
“Unisys began pursuing its patent claims against companies whose
graphics software was capable of writing GIF-format files. To let
everyone know it was serious, Unisys in 1998 went after Corel and
was able to get retroactive fees in an out-of-court
settlement.”
“Unisys now says that it wants a $5,000 license from anyone
running a Web site that contains GIF files made by unlicensed
creation software.”