"Rene Rivera" <grafik.list@redshift-software.com> wrote in message news:41603DCE.3030808@redshift-software.com...
Jonathan Turkanis wrote:
"Stefan Seefeld" <seefeld@sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:41602D55.801@sympatico.ca...
what about taking the occasion and changing to the not-so-patent-ridden png format ?
I remember reading recently that the patent finally expired earlier this year. Does anyone know if that's correct?
The LZW patent in question expired in the US this Summer. But the patent only applies to generation of GIFs, not reading. So it's only the one person who created the GIF that would have needed a license. There are still other countries out there that have the patent active though.
Thanks for clarifying this. I was hoping the expiration of the LZW patent meant I could add LZW compression to the iostreams library. To you have more info on which other countries have issued patents on this algorithm which have yet to expire? Jonathan
