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The GIF File Format is Finally Free
On Sunday the last remaining patent on the GIF file format expired. From the GNU web site:
We were able to search the patent databases of the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union. The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, in Europe it expired on 18 June 2004, in Japan the patent expired on 20 June 2004 and in Canada it expired on 7 July 2004. The U.S. IBM patent expired 11 August 2006, The Software Freedom Law Center says that after 1 October 2006, there will be no significant patent claims interfering with employment of the GIF format.
Both IBM and Unisys had patents on the LZW compression algorithm that is used to store images as the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) format. The GIF format was introduced as a method for compactly storing images by Compuserve in 1987 and it become very popular.
In 1989 it was pointed out publicly that the GIF compression method was patented. And then in 1994 Unisys and Compuserve joinly announce that developers need to license the right to read and write GIF files.
In response to GIF licensing issues, the PNG file format was created. In some ways PNG is better than GIF, but GIF continues to be a widely used file format and probably will be around for some time to come, and now with no worry of any licensing issues.
