How special. Lots of products and vendors have been avoiding the GIF format for years because of the Unisys LZW patents. Some sites, like gnu.org, do not use GIF in principal (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html).
Now Forgent has filed suit against 31 companies (including Macromedia) claiming a patent on the compression used in JPEG. (Story at http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/04/23/HNforgentsues_1.html and elsewhere).
So, we can all switch to PNG, or …
Unisys’ US patent expired back in June 2003, and the Canadian, British, French, German, and Japanese patents will all expire by July of this year. So, let this drag out for a few months and then we can all start switching back! Nice. I’m going to have to thank Forgent for impeccable timing.
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