[1213] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Attorneys: RSA patent invalid
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John R Levine)
Wed Jul 16 22:32:28 1997
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 21:08:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: John R Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: Matthew James Gering <mgering@ricochet.net>
cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <199707162250.PAA01553@ns.ixa.net>
> Would someone have to sue RSA and/or the US PTO in order to invalidate the
> patent, or would they have to violate the patent and sucessfully defend
> themselves?
You can request that the patent office reexamine the patent, which is
what happened to the Comptons multimedia patent, you can file to have it
declared invalid, or you can disregard it and defend any infringement
suit that comes along.
The first is very risky because the reexamination isn't a court proceeding,
just a patent office adminstrative thing, and if they decide the patent's
good after all, that strengthens the presumed validity of the patent. The
other two are very expensive.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47
