🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <7447@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>> ... surely somebody has written a public domain RSA system.
>> ....  If nobody posts anything in the next week, I'll
>> come up with something.
>
>Be careful:  RSA is patented, and publication of such a system would surely
>be a patent infringement (i.e. check with your lawyer first).
>-- 
>				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology

Henry, do you have any idea just what is patented?  (I don't have a patent
lawyer on retainer just now and it's such a bother to hire one during the
holidays :-).  I wonder if a system to do fast modulo exponentiation
would be verboten?  Sadly, patents are getting pretty ridiculous these days;
algorithms are not supposed to be patentable, so what is RSA encryption but
an algorithm?  The patent office seems to allow a number of dodges now - put
an algorithms into a ROM in a box that does something and you can patent it.
Of course, the patent may or may not hold up in court, but it takes a lot of
money to challenge it.  Meanwhile, the threat is supposed to keep PD stuff
from coming out.  So it goes.  Anyway, if you have any suggestions as to what
is or is not claimed as patented by RSA Data Security Inc, it might help in
defining whether some PD code in this area is worth looking into or not.  I
am not asking you for a legal opinion.  <I have considered creating some PD
public key stuff also>.  ~z~

-- 
Zhahai Stewart
{hao | nbires}!gaia!zhahai