William Oldacre persists in believing that personal use of a patent is permissible. It's not legal, but if they don't know, they don't sue. The differences between legality, the cost-effectiveness of a lawsuit, and finding out in the first place are significant here. We want the protecting of legality, if we can get it.
CypherPunks has something that Public Key Partners doesn't. An organization of motivated people who can devote hundreds of person hours to putting the RSA patent under a microscope.
I'm really glad for this observation. One, however, must derate our person-hours some because we aren't lawyers. The basic idea, though, is entirely accurate.
Allowing patents on ordinary mathematics was mistake that has to be rectified.
It has been rectified. RSA is not a mathematical patent. It is the embodiment of some mathematical routines into a machine which is used for a particular purpose and has certain security properties.
(Diffie-Helman-Merkle?)
I got that one wrong. It's the Hellman-Merkle patent. I just posted the actual numbers. Eric