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1. Unis*s holds the patent on the RLE scheme used in GIFs not JPEGs.
2. It was a mistake by the US Patent Office that they were granted such a
patent; and the reason that they are now trying to make money from it is
that the patent runs out fairly soon.
3. Mathematical algorithms cannot be patented, but they can be copyrighted
(e.g. source code).
Therefore, there should not be any problem coding various LVS bits with
your intepretation of an algorithm (as long as the code is different).
Take all this with a fair size grain of salt. Obviously the law is very
malleable and that's why we have lawyers. So watch out regardless.
Ben
On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, Wayne wrote:
> Wensong,
>
> Like encryption is so popular this days, US still not allow the free
> encryption in software to be freely distributed, For each and
> every software/hardware we make, if we use SSL, we will have
> to pay a royalty to that company who has patent on it, even we
> did not use their software at all. Another example is the jpg
> file widely used in the Internet. Unisxx is collecting royalty on its
> patent for that, if your web site using any jpg file that is not
> created by a software paid patent fee to Unisxx (like all the software
> from Adobe paid the patent fee already), then the web master is
> responsible for paying Unisxx for $5000 royalty fee. I am
> using name Unisxx other than their real name, since I do not want
> to be dragged into that battle. We use Adobe software to create
> our jpg files on our web sites to avoid that problem. Likelyhood
> is that once the LVS software has any code function similar to the
> patent in it, the company who holds the patent will go to Court getting
> an order to stop everyone in US to distribute your software, shutdown
> the mirror sites who carry your mirror in US. Unless we have
> enough money to fight this in the Court to either dismiss the
> patent, or prove the method that you are using is not infringing
> any of their patent.
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