[118365] in Cypherpunks
Re: RSA Security, Inc.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vin McLellan)
Sun Sep 26 01:24:12 1999
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To: cypherpunks@algebra.com
From: Vin McLellan <vin@shore.net>
Cc: bill.stewart@pobox.com, chatski@gl.umbc.edu, farber@cis.upenn.edu
Message-Id: <E11V6O3-0000kX-00@polaris.shore.net>
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 00:58:12 -0400
Reply-To: Vin McLellan <vin@shore.net>
I wrote:
> For the record, Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman were MIT grad students
>-- not employees of either the US Government or the University -- when they
>invented the RSA public key cryptosystem. Adi Shamir is an Israeli citizen.
>Ron Rivest, however, was studying at MIT and doing research in algrorithms
>(not crypto, per se) under a NSF grant.
The Diffie and Landau book, "Privacy on the Line," describes Rivest,
Shamir, and Adleman as "three young faculty members at MIT." I trust their
research better than my memory. Unfortunately. Mea Culpa. I should have
double-checked those details before firing off that note on patents and
US-supported academic research.
A gentleman who said he was a former MIT Professor also dropped me a
private note in which he said that when the RSA PKC was invented, Ron Rivest
was a junior faculty member, and Adi Shamir and Len Adlemen were post-docs
being paid by MIT research grants. All three MIT employees.
I interviewed Ron Rivest in '77 for Datamation, I think, and while I
probably had the student/staff details right then, I'm far less certain now
than I was three hours ago. Unfortunately, I haven't asked Prof. Rivest
about those details in the last couple of decades.
As employees of the University, the three would have been subject
to different rules than if they had been mere graduate students.
It was because they were employees that MIT could, quite
appropriately, file for the patent, naming the three of them as the
inventors. After a six-year wait, the RSA patent was issued to MIT, and MIT
subsequently licensed RSA Data Security to develop the technology, and
develop a market for the technology.
I asked Dave Farber of UPenn to post my earlier note to his IP list
with a request that his readers correct or affirm my recollections as to the
logic behind patents being granted for inventions discovered in the process
of academic research supported by US government grants.
I'll be surprised if I have to eat crow on that one, but I'll keep
the plate handy as necessary. I wasn't able to resist an uncharitable crack
at Mr. Chatski earlier, so I suppose a tad more humility will do me good.
Surete,
_Vin
--------
"Cryptography is like literacy in the Dark Ages. Infinitely potent, for good
and ill... yet basically an intellectual construct, an idea, which by its
nature will resist efforts to restrict it to bureaucrats and others who deem
only themselves worthy of such Privilege."
_A Thinking Man's Creed for Crypto _vbm
* Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin@shore.net> *
