patent of the day

[dan at geer.org]

 > 
 > I wonder whether this was research to see how hard it
 > was to get the PTO to grant an absurd patent.
 > 


Get Simson's opinion, please.  It is not insane to
patent something so that you can control its use
and to do so for reasons other than wanting to
lay about in the Caribbean/Vegas.

As to prior art, consider "A Revocable Backup System,"
by Boneh and Lipton, 6th USENIX Security Symposium,
presented 25 July 1996.  (see [1] below)

BTW, I can personally attest that the USPTO makes
both Type I (false positive) errors (in granting
patents that should not be classified as useful
and unobvious) *and* Type II (false negative)
errors (when confronted with something sufficiently
unobvious that they find it impossible to understand
that it is either unobvious or useful much less
both).

--dan

[1]
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/sec96/boneh.html

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