ECC patents?

[Steven M. Bellovin]

In message <432944D5.19658.544675B at localhost>, "James A. Donald" writes:
>    --
>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. 
>

We have been told.  I downloaded Certicom's 2005 annual report
(http://www.certicom.com/download/aid-503/Certicom2005AR.pdf).
On p. 11, it says

	For the year ended April 30, 2004, revenue from IP totalled
	$25-million represented by a licensing contract for our
	Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) technology by the NSA,


		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb



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