A supposedly patent-free suggestion/solution to the curious subpixel rendering in Fedora

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 03/23/2009 11:45 AM, Dmitry Butskoy wrote:
> Kevin Kofler wrote:
>>  (It was disabled in F9, it got reenabled in F10, I have no
>> idea what the rationale was for each of those decisions.) So these
>> days the
>> only difference between freetype and freetype-freeworld is the bytecode
>> interpreter.
>>   
> 
> According to http://www.freetype.org/patents.html, there are 3 patents
> regards bytecode, and 2 of them are filled on May 8, 1989.
> 
> Does it mean that this two should expire at May 8, 2009 (after 20 years) ?

In the US, for patents filed prior to June 8, 1995, the term of patent
is either 20 years from the earliest claimed filing date or 17 years
from the issue date, whichever is longer.

So, for the three Apple patents, this means that this is when the
patents expire:

US5155805 : 2009-10-13 (17 years from issue date: 1992-10-13)
US5159668 : 2009-10-27 (17 years from issue date: 1992-10-27)
US5325479 : 2012-05-28 (20 years from file date: 1992-05-28)

So, two of them will expire this October, but the last one won't go out
until May 2012.

~spot