Call me suspicious, but why has this company waited so long to let people know they own the rights to this format? Something doesn't feel right about that...

I recall M$ recently doing something similar with OpenGL...
 
And anyway the point will be moot in 2004 when the patent expires

Yeah, this is like errr.. I forget which company, that reckoned they had the patent on hyperlinks or something like that. Was it BT? I don't know what officially happened about their claim, but all they seemed to achieve was becoming the inspiration for a bunch of jokes & did themselves a bit of PR damage.

Does anybody happen to have the mail address of this texan company?
First time in my life i feel like hate-e-mailing!

yeh alien, it was bt!! another typical balls up by peeps trying to get some kind of revenue back for alot of bt's blunders and god knows they've made enougth of them!!!

.PNG still lives!

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Yeah, this is like errr.. I forget which company, that reckoned they had the patent on hyperlinks or something like that. Was it BT? I don't know what officially happened about their claim, but all they seemed to achieve was becoming the inspiration for a bunch of jokes & did themselves a bit of PR damage.

Yes, it was BT, they claimed they had invented the idea of hyperlinks years before the WWW. All of a sudden, just as BT's profits were starting to take a nose dive, they "discover" this patent. Rather than try and take someone like the W3C or the IETF to court for patent infringement (or any other non-profit org, from which they would get no money), they decide to take some major US ISPs to court for patent infringement. Last I heard, it had got as far as the courts, but it's all gone quiet since then.

I think that's what happened anyway - I could be wrong (and probably am more than I like to admit )

AndyF

So, GIF files are apparently owned by CompuServe, and they are still around.
 
Don't let this news fool you.

So I gotta pay royalties on all the girlie pics I've downloaded.
 
 
Hmmm......

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So I gotta pay royalties on all the girlie pics I've downloaded.
Only if you get caught

AndyF

its just like what rambus was trying to do. They dont get enough revenue so they try and think up some cocamainie story about owning a patent about something. Look at where that landed rambus. If you ask me it is all a bunch OF BS!!

Saying JPGs are going away is like saying MS is going out of business.

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Saying JPGs are going away is like saying MS is going out of business.

Yeah...about as funny as Apple trying to patent the GUI, haha

and anyway they cant instantly remove all the jpeg features out of all programs in the world
 
And some "illegal crew" will release a jpeg reader/writer sometime should this happen