ECC patents?

[Whyte, William]

They paid $25MM. 

William 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-cryptography at metzdowd.com 
> [mailto:owner-cryptography at metzdowd.com] On Behalf Of James A. Donald
> Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 12:54 PM
> To: cryptography at metzdowd.com
> Subject: RE: ECC patents?
> 
>     --
> 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
> 
> 
> 
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