[108215] in Cypherpunks
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (DOOM Anonymous Untraceable User)
Tue Feb 9 01:38:29 1999
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 07:15:02 +0100 (CET)
From: DOOM Anonymous Untraceable User <nobody@seclab.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: DOOM Anonymous Untraceable User <nobody@seclab.com>
Hi,
Can anybody shed light on the patent restrictions of the RSA public
key algorithm? According to the RSA FAQ,
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RSA is patented under U.S. Patent 4,405,829, issued September 29, 1983 and
held by RSA Data Security, Inc.; the patent expires 17 years after issue, in the
year 2000. RSA Data Security has a standard, royalty-based licensing policy,
which can be modified for special circumstances. The U.S. government can
use RSA without a license because it was invented at MIT with partial
government funding.
In the U.S., a license is needed to "make, use or sell" RSA. However, RSA
Data Security usually allows free non-commercial use of RSA, with written
permission, for academic or university research purposes.
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Does this mean that a commercial organization outside the US can use a
RSA implementation without legal hassles from RSADSI, or is there some
sort of licensing scheme for organizations outside the US? The BSAFE
toolkit from RSA is really expensive, and a nice alternative to that
is RSAeuro which is freely available as source code. Any suggestions?
