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From: andy@rocky.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.misc
Subject: Re: public key encryption and RSA patent status
Message-ID: <615@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Thu, 24-Sep-87 18:59:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocky.615
Posted: Thu Sep 24 18:59:31 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Sep-87 14:34:40 EDT
References: <1372@osiris.UUCP> <441@polyslo.UUCP> <686@sugar.UUCP> <8640@utzoo.UUCP> <4023@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: andy@rocky.UUCP (Andy Freeman)
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 37
Keywords: RSA patent
Xref: utgpu sci.crypt:521 comp.misc:1157

In article <4023@well.UUCP> rab@well.UUCP (Bob Bickford) writes:
>  All rudeness aside (the temptation is great.....), the point of the
>ongoing discussion here has been precisely the fact that the patent would
>appear to cover not just a single defineable invention but in fact an
>entire class of possible inventions, discovered or otherwise.

Since no one has bothered to actually look up the RSA patent to find
out what is covered, various people on the net have assumed that what
it covers supports their position.  One possibility is that it is for
the use of a certain integer function to encrypt digital information.
Another possibility is that it is for one way to encrypt digital information
using integer functions with certain properties.  A third possibility is
that it covers encryption of digital information using integer functions
with certain properties.  Bob's objection suggests that he thinks that the
RSA patent is one of the latter two.

>		However, this patent would appear to attempt to include any
>and all such algorithms, discovered or not, and for that reason I find it
>not deserving of the respect one would normally give toilet paper.

True, the broad patents described above don't list the integer functions,
they merely describe them.  I fail to see why this is objectionable.  For
example, let's say that the US patent office was open when the pulley was
invented.  Bob's like-minded ancestor would have objected to a pulley patent
unless it covered only pulleys made out of materials the inventor mentioned.
Many of the rest of us would settle for a description of the properties that
the the pulley material must have.

So Bob, what do you think the RSA patent covers?  What do you think it
would be legitimate for it to cover?

-andy
-- 
Andy Freeman
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ARPA:  andy@sushi.stanford.edu
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