Re: late draft of the 1.0 Clarifications

Mitra ([email protected])
Mon, 27 Nov 1995 17:29:48 -0800

At 2:51 PM 11/27/95, Tim Wegner wrote:
>J. Gwinner wrote:
>
>> OTOH, if you have a 'freeware' product, you don't owe GIF royalties. The
>> royalty is also for the compression method, not the file format.
>
>I'm the author of several freeware programs (Fractint, and a
>contributing author to POV-Ray and Piclab). The following came direct
>from a phone call with a Unisys patent lawyer:
>
>If a freeware program is included with a commercial product such as a
>book CD (I am alas also an author) the royalties are owed! Even a CD
>of, say, free Internet software owes royalties if it includes any
>LZW. The royalties do not depend on the contribution of the program
>to the product. If some tiny obscure program that has some form of
>LZW added as an afterthought is nestled in the far corner of a CD,
>then full royalties are owed. The lawyer would not budge from this
>point. Of course he was one of a number of Unisys's Welch Patent
>Office whose entire career is enforing the patent.

Its required anyway - and I have that direct from Unisys - there is a
minimum royalty due anyway whether or not the product is free.

- Mitra

=================================================================
Mitra
[email protected] voice: (415)826-2499 fax: (415)826-4423
<http://earth.path.net/mitra>

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