It's very important for all of us on the Internet to register our disgust with Unisys and CompuServe. We might ask you for permission to publish your letter. Variants on the basic LZW patent run for about 20 years and further U.S. applications are pending. Isn't this typical. To me personally, it is plainly obvious that a software patent essentially amounts to a patent on an algorithm, and that an algorithm has nothing to do with computers, electronics or anything physical.
Algorithms predate computers and are a mathematical entity, just like theorems.
My understanding of the answer from Unisys is that they know that if they admit this, then they can't justify software patents to the public and the courts. If you can get better answers from companies that support software patents, I'll be glad to publish them on this site. Back to LPF home page .