🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <12.2B394400@purplet.demon.co.uk>, Owen.Lewis@purplet.demon.co.uk (Owen Lewis) writes:
> It is disingenuous to suppose that the *national only* 
> patenting was just an unfortunate happenstance. What about the 
> similar lack of international patenting of DES? Has any US 
> organisation ever chosen to seek worldwide patents on ANY 
> cryptographic product?

I think you're speaking from hindsight when you comment on the lack
of international patent protection for 1970's-vintage cryptosystems.
Apart from the novelty of attempting to patent something algorithmic
back then, there was much less awareness of the international market
in the U.S.  That may even include IBM, though their patent division
is very sophisticated.  But they never chose to enforce their DES
patents, nor even to collect nominal royalties; they may have felt
that filing foreign patents wasn't worth the (quite considerable) cost.
If you want, I'll supply the U.S. patent numbers; someone with access
to the appropriate databases can check whether or not non-U.S. patents
were ever applied for.

As for your second question -- yes, I know of several instances where
non-U.S. patents on cryptographic devices have been applied for by U.S.
companies.  One caveat -- NSA (well, the Department of Defense, but
NSA in reality) is empowered to file secrecy orders against cryptographic
patent applications, which would block foreign patent applications from
being filed.  Normally, in order to file a foreign application, one has
to receive what's called a ``blue letter'' from the U.S. patent office.
A secrecy order can arrive instead...  I think it's possible to file
non-U.S. patents without file domestically first, but at the very least,
it's much more difficult.  There is an international patent convention
which somewhat simplifies the problem of multiple filings, but it's not
nearly as automatic as, say, the Berne Convention is for copyrights.