🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <PCL.92Nov18102622@black.oxford.ac.uk> pcl@oxford.ac.uk (Paul Leyland) writes:
>In article <PHR.92Nov17033415@napa.telebit.com> phr@telebit.com (Paul Rubin) writes:
>   Regarding RSA in particular, remember also that the motivation of
>   patents is to provide an incentive to invent: the public gets the
>   benefit of the invention in exchange for the inventor getting a
>   limited monopoly.  But RSA was invented without this incentive (we
>   know this because nobody thought to apply for patents until after the
>   invention was already published, which is why it is not patented in
>   Europe, where applications must be filed before the invention is
>   published).  So in exchange for the monopoly, the public in this
>   case got *nothing*.
>
>Oh, I don't know about that.  The European public got rather a lot,
>and don't even have to pay royalties.  Come to that, PKP don't even
>have a monopoly.  A limited monopoly, limited to within the US, yes.
>
>"The public" != "The population of the US".

Which makes the the RSA patent even more absurd -- foreign nationals
get to use RSA for free while US taxpayers, who helped fund the
research, have to pay royalties!

		--Ken Pizzini