Photomosaics are patented !!

I have seen this concept of Photomosaic and montages few years ago also I have seen programs like metapixel to create photo mosaics on linux. Then all of a sudden when I see the picture on the wall of the Computing Commons (Computer pod of University of Arizona), I run a search for the programs and found this patent on photomosaics. This forbids publishing photo mosaics !! I cant believe this. Something like this can be patented. No other software can make such a thing and if it does it is illegal. I found this photomosiac gimp-plugin on the net after a short search. It was pretty cool. I couldnt get it to work initially but after a mail to the author, I was able to get that running. Made a mosaic of myself :-D. Now time to make some cool mosaics for large gatherings, I can make this till the patent is granted in India :-D