According to heise.de, we have to wait until June 2004, because only the American patent expires this year. The European and Japanese LZW patents are still valid. Therefore if you offer compressed GIFs to customers in Europe and Japan, you need to pay license money to the LZW patentars.
Also I see absolutely no reason to use GIF. PNG compresses better and provides more possibilities, such as more than 256 colors and alpha stuff (read: partial transparency). If your browser or whatever does not support PNG, get a better one.
Therefore, Stefan and Unixmad, you should make the Avatar thingie no longer accept GIF graphics but only PNGs
(which are currently not supported!)