[Cryptography] [cryptography] Dual EC backdoor was patented by Certicom?

[Tim Dierks]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 1:55 PM, ianG <iang at iang.org> wrote:

> On 16/06/2014 15:45 pm, Jerry Leichter wrote:
> > On Jun 16, 2014, at 8:34 AM, ianG <iang at iang.org> wrote:
> >> Indeed.  I'm fascinated to understand Certicom's business thinking.
> >> What is the business model behind patenting backdoors?
> > There may not be any, as such.  In 2005, patent trolls were still a
> minor part of the patent landscape.  Most lawsuits were between big
> companies, and the most important thing to have in your war chest in such a
> battle is a large collection of patents you can trade to fend of an
> attacker.
> >
> > In addition, if you're trying to prove that you're a significant company
> in a technical field, being able to say you're "one of the top three patent
> holders world-wide in cryptographic algorithms" (or whatever low number you
> can hope to put in there; I'll bet IBM is number 1 even today) is good for
> your marketing position.
>
> I wouldn't be surprised if this was it.  Or, they claim it is the reason
> in PR.  Basically, a company that patents everything in the space they
> can think of, without deep analysis or oversight.
>

I wasn't at Certicom in 2005, but based on my knowledge of company strategy
(I was CTO 1998-2002), yes, the desire was to file on anything that could
be patented and figure out how valuable it was further down the line.
Certicom was a company with a patent IP strategy, so this makes a lot of
sense.

 - Tim
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