Unisys' Patent on the GIF format ended yesterday

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Slashdot reports on the end of Unisys' patent on the GIF format which lasted ten long years. The patent expired as of yesterday, July 7th 2004, in Canada (it had expired earlier in the US, Europe and Japan). However, there is still one problem: IBM was granted a patent on the same algorithm, which hasn't expired yet (expiry date is August 11th 2006).

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However, even though we are now most likely free to use the GIF format, I'm not sure that it's a good thing - if we keep clinging on to the GIF format, it will hinder widespread adoption of the PNG format which is in most areas superior.