Organization: Manchester Computing Centre, Manchester UK
Lines: 25
In article 13407@nntp.hut.fi, jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) writes:
>
> >U.S. patent law permits applications to filed up to one year after
> >publication. There is nothing underhanded about that; it's simply
> >different than in the rest of the world. And it applies to everyone --
> >I know someone who's applying for a patent under just those circumstances,
> >and it has nothing whatsoever to do with security or cryptography.
>
> Yes. And if someone thinks the RSA patent would have gotten through
> without a patent secrecy order if the patent had been applied before
> publication, I have a nice second-hand bridge to sell, in very good
> condition.
>
If that was really the worry, then they should have filed the application a couple of days before a conference at which they were publishing it. The deadline is the date of APPLICATION not acceptance of the patent. The cat would be well and truly out of the bag before the "men in shades" saw the application let alone managed to do anything about it!
The simple fact is that RSA made a mistake by publishing before applying. It may have been due to their having been ill-advised. It is unlikely to be due to the above.
> Followups directed to alt.conspiracy, as many readers think this is a
> group for cryptography, not politics of governments or freedom.
>
Cryptography has always been about the protection of one countries information from another. It's commercial and private use is something which has come along in the Post-War years. There is a difference between discussing the politics of cryptography and discussing politics (the former is rightly here, the latter is generally a futile exercise anyhow).
