Mr. John B. Sowell

In particular, I received a letter at NASA dated October 1, 1987 from John B. Sowell of the Unisys law department, informing me for the first time that some form of LZW was patented.I naturally expressed skepticism that an algorithm could be patented (a murky legal area which remains so), stated that 'compress' is not identical to LZW, and in fact was designed, developed, and distributed before the ink on the patent was dry.Several telephone conversations later, Mr. Sowell intimated that they would *not* seek any fees from users of 'compress' but instead were signing licensees for hardware implementations of LZW.

In particular, I received a letter at NASA dated October 1, 1987 from John B. Sowell of the Unisys law department, informing me for the first time that some form of LZW was patented.I naturally expressed skepticism that an algorithm could be patented (a murky legal area which remains so), stated that 'compress' is not identical to LZW, and in fact was designed, developed, and distributed before the ink on the patent was dry.Several telephone conversations later, Mr. Sowell intimated that they would *not* seek any fees from users of 'compress' but instead were signing licensees for hardware implementations of LZW.So, regardless of what you believe about a shady legal area, if anyone from Unisys contacts you to extract tribute for the use of 'compress', please tell them that, first, it is not theirs to begin with, and, second, there is someone who will testify in court about the conversation above.

In particular, I received a letter at NASA dated October 1, 1987 from John B. Sowell of the Unisys law department, informing me for the first time that some form of LZW was patented.I naturally expressed skepticism that an algorithm could be patented (a murky legal area which remains so), stated that 'compress' is not identical to LZW, and in fact was designed, developed, and distributed before the ink on the patent was dry.Several telephone conversations later, Mr. Sowell intimated that they would *not* seek any fees from users of 'compress' but instead were signing licensees for hardware implementations of LZW.So, regardless of what you believe about a shady legal area, if anyone from Unisys contacts you to extract tribute for the use of 'compress', please tell them that, first, it is not theirs to begin with, and, second, there is someone who will testify in court about the conversation above.