|||||||||| |||||||||| Information Express || || a voorhees report || || || ||||||| 718-369-0906 voice || || 636-8931 MCI Mail || || |||||||||| |||||||||| 411 First St., Brooklyn, NY 11215 ==============================================================+ (c) 1994 Mark Voorhees --Feel free to re-post this article freely-- GORE URGED TO PUSH DIGITAL SIGNATURE STANDARD FORWARD Electronic security firms call for resolution of cryptographic patents March 21, 1994--Eight leading data security firms have written Vice President Albert Gore requesting that he prod the adoption of the proposed Digital Signature Standard. A patent dispute between the government and Public Key Partners is holding up the standard, which would provide a way of verifying documents used in electronic commerce. The companies--AT&T, among them--are frustrated that they are missing business opportunity through government inaction. The original standard was proposed in August 1991. PKP owns most of the critical U.S. cryptographic patents. It negotiated an agreement with the National Institute of Standards and Technology that would give PKP the right to earn royalties on products using the government's digital signature standard. That agreement, which was published in the Federal Register last June, raised a ruckus in industry among vendors who did not want to pay PKP. Gore bent to that opposition on February 4, when his office announced that the standard would be royalty free. While that pronouncement greatly pleased industry, it has created a thicket of sticky, interwoven problems that defy quick resolution. The federal government must either assume the royalty payments, which would likely total millions of dollars; try to invalidate PKP's patents in court; or come up with a new standard. The first option is politically explosive and the second and third are time consuming. "Many of us have invested tremendous time, effort and money in developing systems and products" built to the proposed standard, the letter said. A new standard would also encounter royalty demands from PKP and delay commercial development by four to five years. "Further delay would only delay product development, frustrate the user base, fragment the market and delay the benefits to be realized through electronic commerce," the letter said. Gore's office did not respond for comment by press time. The companies signing the letter were: Information Security Corp.; Litronic Industries; AT&T Secure Communications Systems; Digital Signature; Mykotronx, Inc.; Datakey, Inc,; SecureWare, Inc.; and Cordant, Inc. The letter was dated March 14. (For more information, please refer to the March 25 issue of Information Law Alert, which will be in the mail shortly.) | Mark Voorhees | voorhees reports | | 411 first street | 636-8931 MCI Mail | brooklyn, ny 11215-2507 | | 1-718-369-0906 (voice) | markvoor@phantom.com | 1-718-369-3250 (fax) -- Stanton McCandlish * mech@eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." - Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 14 1994