Z:gnu-www-ja-danger-of-software-patents--06add5-For instance, in 1984 the Comp/en

For instance, in 1984 the Compress program was written, a program for compressing files using the  LZW data compression algorithm, and at that time there was no patent on that algorithm for compressing files. The author got the algorithm from an article in a journal. That was when we thought that the purpose of computer science journals was to publish algorithms so people could use them.