ECC patents?

James A. Donald jamesd at echeque.com
Thu Sep 15 12:54:29 EDT 2005


    --
Whyte, William:
> It hints that only some particular curves have been 
> licensed. It could be that NSA has decided not to buy 
> a license for the other curves, or it could be that 
> operations on those curves aren't patented. The 
> presentation doesn't give enough information to 
> establish which.

If the NSA paid anything significant for any of the 
curves, we would be told.  Therefore the NSA paid
nothing or almost nothing, and therefore if the NSA 
licensed anything, it would have licensed everything.

I doubt that the NSA paid any money whatsoever for this 
license, making it profoundly unimpressive as evidence 
that *any* curves have a plausible valid patent.  If the 
NSA paid real money, the patent holders would be 
sticking it in our face as a price setting precedent. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     uFGgCOtWvwFnmCL5tYGLSloqyccg5nCjgOZZ2xdW
     4NjnEzQaXNpdg5TTfRnBvcrjTbnHJ6AGsfz5BcvsG



---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com



More information about the cryptography mailing list