[7601] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: what to call RSA
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John R Levine)
Fri Jul 28 12:47:23 2000
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 10:38:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: John R Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: David Jablon <dpj@world.std.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20000728012706.00838940@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.91.1000728103413.10841E-100000@ivan.iecc.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
RSA Data Security does have some registered trademarks for encryption
software. In principle, they're not enforcable against an algorithm as
opposed to an implementation thereof, but considering how unpleasant RSA
the company has been in the past, I don't see any point in picking a
fight with them.
I'd call it ASR, it's straightforward and descriptive, and makes it clear
you're referring to the now-public-domain algorithm, not anyone's
proprietary implementation thereof.
Incidentally, the trademark for RSA as crypto software was only granted
in March 2000. Too bad nobody thought to file an opposition letter
claiming that it's merely the descriptive name of a mathematical algorithm.
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
