Deflate
Data compression algorithm / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In computing, Deflate (stylized as DEFLATE, and also called Flate[1][2]) is a lossless data compression file format that uses a combination of LZ77 and Huffman coding. It was designed by Phil Katz, for version 2 of his PKZIP archiving tool. Deflate was later specified in RFC 1951 (1996).[3]
Katz also designed the original algorithm used to construct Deflate streams. This algorithm was patented as U.S. patent 5,051,745, and assigned to PKWARE, Inc.[4][5] As stated in the RFC document, an algorithm producing Deflate files was widely thought to be implementable in a manner not covered by patents.[3] This led to its widespread use – for example, in gzip compressed files and PNG image files, in addition to the ZIP file format for which Katz originally designed it. The patent has since expired.