[Cryptography] To what is Anderson referring here?

[ianG]

On 4/06/2014 12:37 pm, Jerry Leichter wrote:

> I think we have the meat here for an Anderson-like study:  Has any actually made money from a crypto-related patent?


RSA as I mentioned.  The RSADSI accounts are probably available, and it
was a history of some interest, showing literally the fortunes of the
patent over time.  Verisign was a public company, and reached into the
many billions in market cap, and its existence was based more or less
entirely on the ability of the patent to force Netscape to add RSA into
SSLv2.



...

> The results are of both theoretical and practical interest.  From a theoretical point of view, it would inform, with actual data, the debate about the public interest issues in patents:  If the only real effect of crypto patents is to make the subject of the patent unavailable to the public for the patent's lifetime, then patenting of such material does not fulfill the public interest goals of making inventions broadly available.  From a practical point of view, if it can be shown that patents in this area are essentially worthless - you pay to get a piece of paper, but no one will buy what you're selling - it might be easier to convince people to freely license their patents (assuming they get them at all).
> 
> Sounds like a nice master's thesis for someone in an economics department or some related field.


Just to quibble, I'd say it is PhD.  You actually need to do quite a lot
of research, gather quite a lot of evidence.  You'll need to construct
various theories and then collect the data to show which of the theories
better explains the various observations.

Also because it is basically competition theory and business results
(micro) I'd suggest it be done at a business school where they are
actually interested in this sort of interaction.  You need the hard
competition econ with a take-no-prisoners attitude.

But I agree with the plea -- this would be of huge interest.  And, we
now have enough data on the topic (time) to give us an empirical base.



iang