ECC patents?

[Ben Laurie]

Alexander Klimov wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> ECC is known since 1985 but seems to be absent in popular free
> software packages, e.g., neither gnupg nor openssl has it (even if the
> relevant patches were created). It looks like the main reason is some
> patent uncertainty in this area.
> 
> An internet research shows that Certicom claims to hold quite a few
> patents in the area. Some people claims that it is still possible to
> implement ECC without violating any patent, because neither ECC in
> general, nor ECDH, nor ECElGamal are patented. Yet another POV is that
> although algorithms themselves are not patented the curves (especially
> whose standardized by NIST) are patented (probably, only for GF(p) and
> GF(2^n)-based curves are not).
> 
> Does anyone know a good survey about ECC patent situation?

I don't, but it is not the case that OpenSSL does not include ECC.

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