ECC patents?

[Nick Owen]

James A. Donald wrote:
>     --
> 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. 

I had a recent discussion with a person in a government agency that
indicated we would not be able to use them as a reference and that they
would probably want an unlimited license - because there could be no
reference to a number of users within the agency.  They did say that
they would get GSA pricing.  I suspect that Certicom got GSA pricing for
the deal as is, I assume, required by law.

Nick


-- 

Nick Owen
WiKID Systems, Inc.
404.962.8983 (desk)
404.542.9453 (cell)
http://www.wikidsystems.com
https://sourceforge.net/projects/wikid-twofactor/

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