[109607] in Cypherpunks
Re: P1363: RSA claiming trademark on all uses of "RSA" to
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Broiles)
Tue Mar 30 18:45:17 1999
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 15:27:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
To: Roger Schlafly <schlafly@mail.cruzio.com>
cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19990329204718.00687e14@apop.cse.ucsc.edu>
Reply-To: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
On Mon, 29 Mar 1999, Roger Schlafly wrote:
> 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.
I wasn't able to reach the IEEE site with the letters, so perhaps there's
more to this question than meets my eyes, but I don't see any reason why
anyone would want to pay any attention to this sort of silliness. RSADSI
has enjoyed several years' worth of consumer confusion about the term
"RSA" and the generally favorable impression that "RSA encryption" has
among cryptographers and consumers, which exists because of the strength
of the RSA public key cryptosystem, but wasn't necessarily associated with
a particular organization in Silicon Valley.
If they talked with a trademark lawyer when they formed RSADSI, they'd
have received advice to the effect that they ought to choose a component
of their name which wasn't already in widespread use in order to create
the strongest possible trademark.
But they were smarter than that - if they'd chosen a word which nobody'd
heard of (or which wasn't connected in the minds of the rest of the world
with strong, reliable encryption), they'd have had to work a lot harder
building their business.
So it strikes me as a bit unfair for them to now argue that the ambiguity
around "RSA the company" and "RSA the algorithm" is a bad thing; they've
been making money with it for years.
I think a good shorthand name for the RSA public key cryptosystem is,
well, "RSA". The patent's only in force for another 18 months or so, let's
not encumber that particular nexus of IP with yet another legal monopoly -
which, in the case of trademark, never expires, so long as it's still in
use. Don't forget that the only remaining form of IP they've got in the
RC4 algorithm is a trademark on the term "RC4" - but they manage to
license that (plus freedom from FUD) for an appreciable amount of money.
(They've got some copyrighted code they'll license to you, but there's a
nice fast version in SSLeay you can have for free.)
If people are determined to rename the damn thing, I propose "Toto".
--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles@netbox.com
