Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Just ran into the GIF patent extortion!
Author: Jonathan Hendry Posted: 7/24/2000; 11:35:09 PM Topic: Just ran into the GIF patent extortion! Msg #: 19000 (In response to 18984) Prev/Next: 18999 / 19001
This is an outrage and extortion. Extortion because they didn't start charging till GIF was locked in and then carefully made sure Big Companies paid them off since that is all they seem to care about.Well, I seem to remember Unisys going through some pretty lean times a few years back. I'd bet that had a lot to do with the patent enforcement. Not some dastardly attempt to snare users, but an order from the top to find every last source of revenue in order to stay solvent:
"What's this one?" "Oh, it's a compression thing." "Who uses it?" "Oh, lots of people. It's also used in the most popular image file format. Millions of files use it" "So how much do we get?" "Uh, nothing. "Nothing?!" "Maybe a smidge" (Dope slaps Tech) (Stuffs patent in pneumatic tube and sends it up to Legal).
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