[14679] in Cypherpunks
Re: more info from talk at MIT yesterday.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Adam Shostack)
Fri Jun 3 11:09:59 1994
From: Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>
To: perry@imsi.com
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 94 11:03:16 EDT
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
In-Reply-To: <9406031436.AA04161@snark.imsi.com>; from "Perry E. Metzger" at Jun 3, 94 10:36 am
Bill Sommerfeld says:
> They also confirmed Tom Knight's suspicions about what they're going
> to do when someone reverse engineers the chip and publishes the
> Skipjack algorithm & the family key: they've got a patent application
> filed, under a secrecy order; if the algorithm is published, they'll
> lift the secrecy order and have the patent issued, and use that to go
> after anyone making a compatible version.
An interesting variant of this tactic might be for the folks
who reverse engineer Clipper/SkipJack to go off and patent it in
*other* countries, thus making it impossible to sell or use Clipper
outside of the USA.
Adam
