Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bywater!arnor!arnor!victor From: victor@watson.ibm.com (Victor Miller) Newsgroups: comp.compression Subject: Re: LZW Patent rights (was looking for info on image compression) Message-ID: Date: 3 Apr 91 15:22:12 GMT References: <1173@applix.com> <2741@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> Sender: news@watson.ibm.com (NNTP News Poster) Reply-To: victor@watson.ibm.com Organization: IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center Lines: 15 In-Reply-To: simon@ITD.Adelaide.EDU.AU's message of 2 Apr 91 06:30:43 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: irt I hate to tell you this, but the orignal LZ2 is also patented by Unisys (originally Sperry), by Eastman et. al. Lempel and Ziv were visiting Sperry Research center at the time. In addition, there are some interferences between the Welch patent, and ours (Miller-Wegman), and our patent was filed 21 days earlier. I can only blame myself for having our paper published in a relatively obscure place (proceedings of a conference "Combinatorial Algorithms on Words" Springer-Verlag NATO ASI series) for it not being more widely known. As far as I know the LZ1 method was never patented, but, as someone pointed out Xerox has patented their variation (Greene, et. al.). -- Victor S. Miller Vnet and Bitnet: VICTOR at WATSON Internet: victor@watson.ibm.com IBM, TJ Watson Research Center