Patent ID: 7439887

Claim:
A method for decompressing Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) encoded data, comprising: generating a codeword table to store a codeword string and a codeword length for each of a number of codewords, wherein the codeword string is defined by a codeword previously represented in the codeword table and a character, wherein the codeword length represents a total number of characters in the codeword string; translating a current codeword in the GIF encoded data according to the codeword table to generate a series of characters represented by the current codeword; and storing the series of characters in a computer memory space; and wherein the codeword and the character defining each codeword string in the codeword table are defined by a first and second number of bits, respectively, and wherein each codeword length in the codeword table is defined by third number of bits.