[Patents] GIF/LZW in Europe??

[Hans Schou chlor@inet.uni2.dk]

"Unisys Enforcing Patents"
"They're  now threatening to sue even noncommercial websites that carry
GIFs for a $5000 license fee, regardless of whether the GIFs were
generated by licensed software or not."

http://corp2.unisys.com/LeadStory/lzw-license.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/29/0722236.shtml

Can anyone tell me if this LZW patent is registred i Europe?
I mean, if Europe previus didn't accept software patents,
then can this patent not be relevant in Europe.

Another thing. It is legal for anybody to take a patent and
build a thing at home for privat use only. In that case 
it should be legal for me to implement LZW and use it
on my own homepage. So: is it illegal to distribute
source code which use an algorithme?
It is sure illegal to sell and distribute binaries but
the source code is 'just' an example of how to implement it.

The GIF creating library 'gd' has just stopped distributing
the GIF library because they were threatend to do so. Mostly
'gd' was distributed in source code so maybe it is not 
illegal to distribute the source. 

We can only get answer by having a trial against UNISYS.
Should we start funding a trial to get the answer once
for all?
If the patent is valid in New Zealand, we could start publish
'gd' on a web-server there. To my knowledge, New Zealand should
have a decent court which should give a fair trial.

The big question is: Is it illegal to distribute source code
which contains a patented algorithme?

-- 
best regards
+-------------------------------------------------------+
! Hans Schou,      Hamletsgade 4-201,     DK-2200 Kbh N !
! Fax : +45 3391 5310             Phone : +45 3586 1266 !
! mailto:chlor@schou.dk             http://www.schou.dk ;!
+-------------------------------------------------------+
   One Day - One World - One Operating System - Linux
      12 September 1999 - http://www.linuxdemo.org