That's twisting the story quite a bit.  Compuserve made GIFs (unaware of the patent) and Unisys had been charging companies for the patent for a long time (but were unaware of GIF).  When Unisys found out, they started charging.  It was hardly bait and switch.  At no point did Unisys ever tell people to use GIF because they had no plans to charge for it.