At 03:23 18/11/99 +0100, Jan Wieck wrote:
>
> From the very beginning of US patent No. 4,558,302 (the thing
> behind Unisys's LZW):
>
The other thing to remember is that there are a very large number of
countries in which this patent does not apply because it was not even
applied for until after the alogorithm was made public. In the first
publication of the LZW algorithm, there was no patent notice, but I think
the US patent had been applied for.
For US-based distribution sites, however, you may find the threat of legal
action from a large company is enough to make it less desirable to
distribute.
FWIW, I think Unisys patented the LZW algorithm only.
It's probably a bit late to ask, but how difficult would it be to
generalize your code to use the compressor/encryption library of choice?
zlib and pgp spring to mind. This would kill three birds with one stone.
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