Legal/Permission Question

[Tyler Knott]

Davidl wrote:
> how can gif format patent prevent the others from writing a real gif file
> 
> 
> 
The GIF format patent (actually a patent on the LZW compression algorithm used 
by the GIF format) can't prevent anyone from writing a GIF encoder, but it does 
(or at least it did, before it expired a few years ago) make it illegal to 
distribute it without paying royalties to Unisys.

P.S.: Davidl, could you please try to use better capitalization, punctuation, 
grammar, and spelling in your posts?  It might take a bit longer to type out, 
but it looks a lot more professional and is much more readable than your current 
posting style.