[109566] in Cypherpunks
Re: P1363: RSA claiming trademark on all uses of "RSA" to
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Roger Schlafly)
Tue Mar 30 00:22:59 1999
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 20:47:18 -0800
To: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, cypherpunks@toad.com, jya@pipeline.com,
gnu@toad.com
From: Roger Schlafly <schlafly@mail.cruzio.com>
Cc: stds-p1363@mail.ieee.org
In-Reply-To: <199903300127.RAA19778@toad.com>
Reply-To: Roger Schlafly <schlafly@mail.cruzio.com>
At 05:27 PM 3/29/99 -0800, John Gilmore wrote:
>> Security Dynamics Technologies, Inc. has sent a letter to the P1363
>> working group regarding trademark protection of the RSA name. The letter
>> is now available from our patents page
>> http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1363/patents.html
>> or directly at
>> http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1363/letters/SecurityDynamics.jpg
>PS: The alternative, of course, is to ignore them and keep using the
>term "RSA". Let them prove to a court that they own the term, which
>was in use before they formed the company and ...
If you read the letter carefully, SDT is not claiming to own "RSA".
Not yet, anyway. Previously, RSADSI with a list of all its trademarks,
registered or not, and "RSA" was not one of them.
What SDT is asking is that everyone else voluntarily stop certain uses
of "RSA" so that SDT/RSADSI will be able to get a trademark on "RSA"
in the future. That is the way I read it, anyway.
Why anyone outside of SDT/RSADSI would want to cooperate, I don't know.
It is a little like Microsoft asking everyone to stop using "windows"
or "word" except in an approved manner, in order to help Microsoft get
trademarks on those words.
