[13291] in Cypherpunks
Re: Putting new PGP on company machines.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (smb@research.att.com)
Fri May 6 19:53:02 1994
From: smb@research.att.com
To: Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>
Cc: Andrew Purshottam <andy@autodesk.com>, cypherpunks@toad.com
Date: Fri, 06 May 94 19:48:25 EDT
> Has anyone asked the company shysters about the legal status of MIT-
PGP?
> I'd really like to have and use pgp at work, but have hesitated abou
t
> putting it our machines here, as we are so prim and proper (in publi
c)
> about intellectual property.
Asked them what? When PGP 2.5 is released (what you call MIT-PGP), it
*WILL* be legal in the US. It will use RSAREF 2.0, so there will be
no question as to its legality in the US for non-commercial purposes.
Two things come to mind. First, some company lawyers may not like
the provisions of the RSAREF license. At the very least, most companies
with on-staff lawyers would want them to glance at it. Second, I've
never seen a comparable piece of electronic ``paper'' about IDEA. Have
you seen something from the patent owners themselves? Not that I have
any doubts -- but I've seen cases where lawyers demanded a paper trail
of agreements from the patent assignee of record as listed in the
Official Gazette.
The answers may be obvious to some folks on this list -- but most of
us aren't lawyers.
