Stanford patents

Declan McCullagh writes:

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You'll have trouble doing a successful boycott of RSA. What, you won't use Netscape Navigator or PGP?

Actually RSA is not a hard target for people like us to threaten. The Diffie-Hellman patent expires in 210 days. Cylink is prevented from taking legal action against anyone for violating this patent while the current lawsuit is being decided. When Diffie-Hellman expires ElGamal is available for use for free. So the best threat one can make against RSA is to directly challenge their revenue stream: start working on making ElGamal an available option in all systems which use RSA.

A couple of minor corrections. Diffie-Hellman doesn't expire until Sept. 6, 1997. Cylink can sue anyone at any time, for infringement up to 6 years in the past. It is not likely to do so while its case against RSADSI is pending, because most of the infringers are RSADSI customers who have been indemnified by RSADSI. ElGamal won't be free of patent claims until Hellman-Merkle expires, a month after Diffie- Hellman. ElGamal/DSA is an attractive alternative to RSA, and ought to be more widely used. More information about the patent lawsuit can be found at: http://bbs.cruzio.com/~schlafly#pkpsuit There are some hearings scheduled, but nothing of great significance has been decided so far. Roger