[109597] in Cypherpunks
Re: P1363: RSA claiming trademark on all uses of "RSA" to describe algorithm
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alfred John Menezes)
Tue Mar 30 15:42:16 1999
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 14:28:16 -0500 (EST)
From: Alfred John Menezes <ajmeneze@cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca>
To: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>
cc: cypherpunks@toad.com, jya@pipeline.com, stds-p1363@mail.ieee.org,
ipsec@tis.com
In-Reply-To: <199903300127.RAA19778@toad.com>
Reply-To: Alfred John Menezes <ajmeneze@cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca>
Neal Koblitz suggested the following alternative to me, which is
consistent with the traditional academic practice of listing authors
alphabetically:
Adleman Rivest Shamir Encryption.
- Alfred
On Mon, 29 Mar 1999, 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
>
> Now that their patent is getting ready to expire (next fall), RSA is
> trying to crack down on anyone who refers to the use of the
> algorithm by calling it "RSA". They don't mind if you call it "type
> 1" or something else meaningless and irrelevant, though. This is a
> new low for a company known for self-serving legal bluster.
>
> You would think they'd prefer to have people mentioning their corporate
> name all over the place, but now that the algorithm has wide recognition,
> they seem to want to make sure that nobody *else* can say their product
> does RSA. Even if it does. If they can't keep you from competing,
> at least they want to prevent you from advertising that you compete.
> They aren't asking much...
>
> Perhaps we should have a little contest for what to call the RSA
> algorithm, given RSA's objection to calling a shovel a spade. ASR
> perhaps? Though ASS is tempting, I wouldn't want to gratuitously
> eliminate Ron Rivest's initial. SAR as in what a SARry company? RAS,
> to send a RASberry to the lawyers?
>
> "EFN" is rot13 of RSA, can we make up a good phrase that it's
> supposed to stand for? Electronic Freedom Now? (Well, after Oct 2000
> anyway.) Extra Funny Name? Elegant Fraud Nixer? Embargoed For Now?
>
> STB is RSA+1 (as in IBM and HAL); any good phrases lurking in there?
>
> RAL are the first (rather than last) initials of the inventors.
> Then there's RRASLA, the first and last initials.
>
> There's always completely new names: "ExpoMax", "FactorThis!",
> "SuperSig", "RonFish", etc...
>
> John
