Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 3-Jun-94 Re: more info from talk at .. by Adam Shostack@bwh.harvar
Bill Sommerfeld says:
They also confirmed Tom Knight's suspicions about what they're going to do when someone reverse engineers the chip and publishes the Skipjack algorithm & the family key: they've got a patent application filed, under a secrecy order; if the algorithm is published, they'll lift the secrecy order and have the patent issued, and use that to go after anyone making a compatible version.
An interesting variant of this tactic might be for the folks who reverse engineer Clipper/SkipJack to go off and patent it in *other* countries, thus making it impossible to sell or use Clipper outside of the USA.
Or to just write the software/burn the chips in other countries and freely distribut the code/plans. Either way, the U.S. patent is compromised. Jer darklord@cmu.edu | "it's not a matter of rights / it's just a matter of war finger me for my | don't have a reason to fight / they never had one before" Geek Code and | -Ministry, "Hero" PGP public key | http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr25/jbde/