[167] in Cypherpunks
PATENT: A LEGAL way---maybe!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Hughes)
Mon May 3 01:54:56 1993
Date: Sun, 2 May 93 22:39:14 -0700
From: Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: William Oldacre's message of 03 May 93 00:02:44 EDT <930503040243_76114.2307_BHA51-1@CompuServe.COM>
William Oldacre persists in believing that personal use of a patent is
permissible. It's not legal, but if they don't know, they don't sue.
The differences between legality, the cost-effectiveness of a lawsuit,
and finding out in the first place are significant here. We want the
protecting of legality, if we can get it.
>CypherPunks has something that Public Key Partners doesn't. An
>organization of motivated people who can devote hundreds of person
>hours to putting the RSA patent under a microscope.
I'm really glad for this observation. One, however, must derate our
person-hours some because we aren't lawyers. The basic idea, though,
is entirely accurate.
>Allowing patents on ordinary mathematics was
>mistake that has to be rectified.
It has been rectified. RSA is not a mathematical patent. It is the
embodiment of some mathematical routines into a machine which is used
for a particular purpose and has certain security properties.
> (Diffie-Helman-Merkle?)
I got that one wrong. It's the Hellman-Merkle patent. I just posted
the actual numbers.
Eric
