[my silly public key example deleted]
No, because of the language in the patent which requires that it be infeasible to find the deciphering key from the enciphering key. Here's the claim, from patent 4218582, that covers all of public key cryptography:
1. In a method of communicating securely over an insecure communication channel of the type which communicates a message from a transmitter to a receiver, the improvement characterized by: providing random numbers at the receiver; generating from said random numbers a public enciphering key at the receiver; generating from said random numbers a secret deciphering key at the receiver such that the secret deciphering key is directly related to and computationally infeasible to generate from the public enciphering key; communicating the public enciphering key from the receiver to the transmitter; processing the message and the public enciphering key at the transmitter and generating an enciphered message by an enciphering transformation, such that the enciphering transformation is easy to effect but computationally infeasible to invert without the secret deciphering key; transmitting the enciphered message from the transmitter to the receiver; and processing the enciphered message and the secret deciphering key at the receiver to transform the enciphered message with the secret deciphering key to generate the message.
Doesn't a patent have to have enough information for a person skilled in the art to construct a prototype? I publish for the first time here my invention. I will patent it within a years time. Striped Vegetables ---- This isn't enough for anyone to do anything. If I were more specific, I might have something patentable, but then by claims wouldn't be as broad. If you figured out how to make an anti-gravity device. That device would be patentable. The concept of "anti-gravity" device is not patentable. If I could duplicate the effect of your anti-gravity device without using any of the same novel mechanisms. My device would be separately patentable. Peter Baumbach baumbach@atmel.com