Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!sdsu!polyslo!vlsi3b15!batman!nicholaA
From: nicholaA@batman.moravian.EDU (Andy Nicholas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: ShrinkIt Compression (modified LZW) and legal issues
Summary: maybe not...
Keywords: Compression, legal issues, LZW, ShrinkIt
Message-ID: <714@batman.moravian.EDU>
Date: 13 Dec 89 03:34:52 GMT
References: <3980@puff.cs.wisc.edu>
Organization: Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA
Lines: 40

In article <3980@puff.cs.wisc.edu>, blochowi@rt9.cs.wisc.edu (Jason Blochowiak) writes:

> 	This is reprinted without permission from Doctor Dobb's Journal #158
> (December 1989), from the letters section:

[... huge thing about the legality of LZW and who owns the patent deleted ...]

> 	Somewhat interesting, eh? Perhaps it's better that Andy didn't go
> commercial with ShrinkIt/GS ;)

Commercial or not doesn't matter.  If I have produced a product, any product,
that infringes on someone's patent, then I am liable.

I don't particularly like being put in this spot, but I would assume that they
(being unisys or whoever thinks they own the patent this week) would sooner
go after hardware houses that use variants of LZW in their modems, government
bodies like the CCITT which have approved the use of LZW variants for
modems, etc.

I obviously don't have $20,000 to pay for a patent license fee, nor am I
likely to possess such an amount of money in the future.  My system
administrator says that he refuses to run a system where security is based upon
obscurity.  Well, in this case, I probably have to depend on such just to keep
my head above water.

Also, I'm not sure how enforcible such a patent is -- I haven't a clue as to
legal precedence, but Mr. Welch's article was published in IEEE without a
notice that a patent was pending, which some could (possibly) argue would have
left people with the mistaken opinion that implementations of the algorithm
would have been undertaken differently if authors had indeed known that the
algorithm was in the process of being patented.

Then again, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

andy

-- 
Andy Nicholas             GEnie, AM-Online: shrinkit
Box 435, Moravian College       CompuServe: 70771,2615
Bethlehem, PA  18018              InterNET: shrinkit@moravian.edu