The patent history behind GIFs, and the fight to make them free of fees - a podcast by Marketplace

Steve Wilhite, inventor of the graphics interchange format, also known as GIF, died this month at the age of 74. Animated or not, GIFs may now be a common, free feature of the internet, but the tech that powered Wilhite’s format was patented by the technology company Unisys. For a few contentious years during the internet’s youthful era, Unisys wanted to charge fees for all the sparkly GIFs we were sharing. This fight — over who controls how information moves around the web and who gets paid in the process — continues to this day. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Jason Eppink, an artist and a former curator at the Museum of the Moving Image, who gave her a GIF history lesson.

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