ECC patents?

[Ben Laurie]

Alexander Klimov wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Sep 2005, Ben Laurie wrote:
> 
> 
>>Alexander Klimov wrote:
>>
>>>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.
>>
>>I don't, but it is not the case that OpenSSL does not include ECC.
> 
> 
> You are absolutely right the Sun patch was finally accepted,
> although there were some patent-related discussions, e.g., at
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/10/msg00100.html

If debian wants OpenSSL to do something, then it needs to tell OpenSSL. 
We aren't telepaths.

> There is also work on ECC for gnupg
> http://www.g10code.de/tasklist.html#gcrypt-ecc
> and again there were patent-related discussions about the issue. ECC
> is also implemented in crypto++ and other libraries.
> 
> But (potential) problem still persists: even if openssl implements ECC
> it does not save you from patent issues if they exist.

It does if they are owned by Sun.

Cheers,

Ben.

-- 
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html       http://www.thebunker.net/

"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff

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