[44141] in Cypherpunks
Re: Elliptic curves, patent status?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James A. Donald)
Wed Nov 29 11:59:22 1995
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 08:50:13 -0800
To: dan@milliways.org (Dan Bailey)
From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
At 05:16 PM 11/28/95 -0400, Michael Smith wrote:
> > > I'm unclear about the patent status of elliptic curve
> > > systems. Are they covered by the Diffie-Hellman patent?
> > > That is, is the lnguage of this patent broad enough to
> > > cover _all_ public-key systems, regardless of their
> > > mathematical basis?
On Mon, 27 Nov 1995 23:16:10 -0800 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
> > No, but RSA will litigate you with the objective of
> > inflicting extravagant legal costs regardless.
At 08:13 AM 11/29/95 EST, Dan Bailey wrote:
> Does the patent create any headaches for elliptic curve research or
> publishing elliptic curve papers, or just for new products?
Patents do not prohibit research -- Yet.
Patent law continues to be extravagantly re interpreted from time to
time, in a way that continually increases the power of the patent
office and the power of the courts, but this creativity has not
yet collided drastically with freedom of speech.
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