October 1, 2006 - The Software Freedom Law Center announced that after October 1, 2006 all significant patent claims interfering with the employment of the GIF format will expire and all users should have no concerns about using the format.
December 24, 1994 - Unisys and CompuServe announced that they expected licensing fees for software that creates and displays GIF images. This caused a lot of hysteria among developers and website owners using GIF images because of potential future GIF taxes that lead to the development of the PNG format. 1987 - CompuServe introduces the GIF standard and images. | 
