AFAIK not the format but the algorithm is patented. Like with GIF - it
is the compression there.
You were talking about copyrighted formats. GIF is neither patented nor
copyrighted. The LZW compression algorithm is patented (in certain countries).
You can very well read and write GIF files without infringing on anybody’s
patent, and if you can come up with a way to decode/encode them without
using LZW, you are free to use them for storing images even in those
countries.
Again, I don’t believe data formats can be patented, nor copyrighted.
Mattias Engdeg?rd wrote:
AFAIK not the format but the algorithm is patented. Like with GIF - it
is the compression there.
You were talking about copyrighted formats. GIF is neither patented nor
copyrighted. The LZW compression algorithm is patented (in certain countries).
This is NOT TRUE. GIF used to be (still is, I think) copyrighted by
CompuServe, and they once tried (can anyone remember back that far,
about 1995 I think) to collect money on the use of their format. Don’t
remember the exact story, but they eventually backed down when they
realized it would be a PR disaster for them. By that time GIF had
become a de facto standard, thanks in large part to its use by the Web,
where they met active resistance. This was long before the even worse
mess with GIF and Unisys that we have today.
The same mess also applies to the TTF spec. Apple holds the copyrights
on this format as well, although it’s probably going to be used the same
way Sun’s copyright on Java was used: to foil embrace and extend. They
also own the patents for some algorithms used for rendering TTF, which
is even more insidious than the compression patent on GIF’s, because you
can’t even render a TTF without infringing the patent, it seems, while
you could create a GIF that didn’t use LZW, and decompression for LZW is
not subject to a patent. IANAL, but this is what it looks like.
Fortunately, it seems that FreeType 2.x has come up with a new TTF
renderer completely different from the patented method Apple uses. We
will wait and see…–
| Rafael R. Sevilla @Rafael_R_Sevilla |
| Instrumentation, Robotics, and Control Laboratory |
| College of Engineering, University of the Philippines, Diliman |
[ I’ve responded to this in private mail; let us keep this off the SDL list. ]>> You were talking about copyrighted formats. GIF is neither patented nor
copyrighted. The LZW compression algorithm is patented (in certain countries).
This is NOT TRUE. …