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GIF used to be a general purpose image format even for static images. Without the awareness campaign, enterprising devs would probably have extended the gif format to more than 8bpp and we wouldn't use PNG for that today. I'd call that a considerable result.

I don't think there was a lot of immediate action because GIF was already entrenched but I'm guessing a lot of people learned from the situation. It sure made an impression on me.

The patents expired shortly afterward. I figure some lawyers made some money at big companies in the 2-3 year window where they could.