Z:gnu-www-ja-software-patents--affc9e-This is not just academic. In/en

This is not just academic. In 1984, the compress program was written, a program for data compression. At the time, there was no patent on the LZW compression algorithm which it used. Then in 1985, the US issued a patent on this algorithm and over the next few years, those who distributed the compress program started getting threats. There was no way that the author of compress could have realized that he was likely to get sued. All he did was use an idea that he found in a journal just like programmers have always done. He hadn't realized that you could no longer safely use ideas that you found in a journal.