Dan Bricklin is watching the clock as the LZW patent expires in Japan:
“I’ve had this day on my calendar for a long time. I wanted to mark the occasion of the lifting of an issue that was an expensive, major problem for software product companies. You would think that such companies would have had little problem with a very minor part of their products, but they did.”
Dan quotes the press release on the Unisys website: “The U.S. LZW patent expired on June 20, 2003, the counterpart Canadian patent expires July 7, 2004, the counterpart patents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy expire June 18, 2004, and the Japanese counterpart patents expire June 20, 2004.”
Good riddance. What an annoying suppression on innovation this has been. Yeah, I know patents are supposed to encourage innovation, but there’s no doubt in my mind that patents, such as the LZW one, have done exactly the opposite. Consider: How innovative is Unisys the LZW patent holder? Uh, yeah, that’s what I think too. Now compare that to all the ink apps that want to use GIF and LZW compression for exchanging ink. Now these are truly innovative apps. The issue is that trying to author these types of apps in small, unsure markets yet at the same time balancing the demands of patent holders that want to be paid up front, thank you very much, is a heavy burden.