🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1galtnINNhn5@transfer.stratus.com> cme@ellisun.sw.stratus.com (Carl Ellison) writes:
[stuff deleted]
>
>NOTE: The pgp documentation states that PKP acquired the patent rights
>to RSA "... which was developed with your tax dollars..." This is very
>misleading.  U.S. tax dollars only partially funded researchers at MIT
>who developed RSA. The U.S. government itself received royalty-free
>use in return.  This is standard practice whenever the government
>provides financial assistance.  The patents on public-key are no
>different and were handled no differently than any others developed at
>universities with partial government funding. In fact, almost every
>patent granted to a major university includes government support,
>returns royalty-free rights to the government, and is then licensed
>commercially by the universities to private parties.
>

So taxpayers pay for research, if it doesn't amount to anything, they
just lose the money.  If it does amount to anything, they get to pay
twice, once for the research, and then again when someone gets an 
exclusive patent by the University and charges licensing fees.  

If the government gets royalty-free use, then so should the people
who put up the money in the first place, US taxpayers...

BTW-The January issue of Popular Science has an article on encryption
    It states: "The computer industry would like NIST to
    adopt the RSA technology, but that isn't likely to happen.  One
    reason:  If the privately developed technology becomes a standard,
    the government will have to pay royalties for its use."



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