RE: [SLUG] resizing scanned correspondence images

["Adelle Hartley" <adelle@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

According to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html 

	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 patent expired
	on 20 June 2004 and in Canada it
	expired on 7 July 2004. The U.S. IBM
	patent expires 11 August 2006, (we
	are still searching the databases of
	other countries).


An interesting aspect of the Unisys/GIF story, is that they "gave away" a
part of the patent in 1995 (by announcing that people could use GIFs under
certain conditions), only to retract (or at least to limit) that permission
in 1999.

Adelle.