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From: tjt@lll-risky.arpa (Tim Tessin)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.misc
Subject: Re: public key encryption and RSA patent status
Message-ID: <104@lll-risky.arpa>
Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 14:38:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: lll-risk.104
Posted: Mon Sep 21 14:38:30 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Sep-87 07:11:06 EDT
References: <1372@osiris.UUCP> <441@polyslo.UUCP> <686@sugar.UUCP> <1490@epimass.EPI.COM> <25@nl.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: tjt@lll-risky.arpa.arpa (Tim Tessin)
Lines: 25
Keywords: RSA patent pencil paper bgofus
Xref: mnetor sci.crypt:554 comp.misc:1269

In article <25@nl.cs.cmu.edu> mlm@nl.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Mauldin) writes:
> 
> Several months ago I posted a request asking just what about RSA the
> MIT patent covers.  I got no answers.  

> Not wanting to spend the time or money to ask the patent office for a
> copy of the patent, I hoped I could find out on the net.  Does anyone
> know specifically what the Patent was granted for/what they claimed?
> 
> Michael L. Mauldin (Fuzzy)

Well, I am having cracker-jack Government patent lawyers take a look
at the RSA Patent.  The patent grants some rights to the U.S.
Government, so my answer may not be for everyone.  I have a copy
of the patent, but I can't really read it (you need a recursive
descent parser to wade through some of the clauses :-)).  They seem
to be patenting the "implementation" of an algorithm for a specific
purpose (cryptography).  The example posted earlier on the use
of exp() for feedback loops is probably very similar.
I'll let ya'll know what I find out.

Tim Tessin - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 
Phone: (415) 423-4560 / 422-8971
ARPA:  tjt@lll-tis.ARPA
UUCP:  {ihnp4,dual,sun}!lll-lcc!lll-tis!tjt