legal stuff, LZW compression, localization

I´ve been told to read this from http://www.unisys.com/unisys/lzw/ "More and more people are becoming aware that the reading and/or writing of GIF images requires a license to use Unisys patented Lempel Ziv Welch (LZW) data compression and decompression technology, including United States Patent No. 4,558,302, Japanese Patent Numbers 2,123,602 and 2,610,084, and patents in Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Since January of 1995, Unisys has entered into almost two thousand license agreements for use of GIF and other LZW-based technology." My information (from a big german ISP beeing in a big association) was that it can be legally used in Germany. It would be great to receive further information if anyone is informed better than me... regards -- o----------0-¬---------O-·---¬----o---®-----o o O ° . | http://www.kiffen.de | pRoteçt y0ur bRaín |0 O ° ¤ ° · 0°·³°²'²³-¹'³´³°^°³~³²³°'³²²¨³²^³¹³²°²³`³º³°Þ ° o © ° . · | psychedelic experience | gott@kiffen.de | O ° o ° o-¬--o--0-----©-·--O-----o-----0-¤----------o 0 ° · ° . ¤ ·