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From: karn@petrus.UUCP (Phil R. Karn)
Newsgroups: net.crypt,net.legal
Subject: Re: RSA cryptographic algorithm patented?
Message-ID: <405@petrus.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Jul-85 02:05:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: petrus.405
Posted: Wed Jul 17 02:05:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Jul-85 05:39:57 EDT
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Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc
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Xref: watmath net.crypt:411 net.legal:1837

Along the same lines, IBM holds patents on DES. It is claimed that they will
grant royalty-free licenses to anyone wishing to manufacture chips
conforming to the standard. A few thoughts come to mind:

1. To formally adhere to DES (i.e., to gain a certification from NBS), you
have to implement the algorithm in hardware on a special-purpose chip.
General purpose computer software implementations are not certifiable.  I've
never understood this requirement, except to note that a hardware
implementation seems to be related to the test for patentability.

2. IBM is not widely known to cheerfully give away things for free.  In
fact, this is so out of character for them that one almost wonders if they
have an ulterior motive to promote widespread usage of DES (I think you can
guess what it might be.) Or, more charitably, perhaps they realize their
patent on the "algorithm" itself could never be defended anyway, so they
hope to gain some public good will out of it.

Naturally, the above are strictly my personal opinions.

Phil