I've been spending the week in Washington DC, so I went by the Public Search Room of the U S Patent and Trademark office and requested the complete files on the four patents named in rfc1424 (see below). I have photocopies of nearly the complete folders, which include the initial proposed patent and all the written communication between the patent attorney and the patent examiner. (I think all four of these patents had all of their claims rejected on the first pass.) You see the patent examiner explain what is wrong, criticizing the patent, and the subsequent ammendments and more rejections until the patent is granted. (This is important information if one wishes to challenge a patent. You can see how various arguments were dealt with before and what likely responses from patent examiners are.) I'll bring all of this to the October Mountain View cypherpunks meeting, assuming it is Sat Oct 9. I'll also try and be ready to summarize the history of each patent. What are missing from my copies are mostly legal communications that had no techincal interest -- powers of attorney & calculations of fees. I also omitted most of the published articles that were referenced (several other patents and some scholarly papers) and some seemingly redundant diagrams. Of course, I also have copies of the final patents granted. The Search Room is an interesting place. I pulled several faux pas and got quite an education in patents and federal offices.... strick -------------- excerpt follows -------------- RFC 1424 Key Certification and Related Services February 1993 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University have granted Public Key Partners (PKP) exclusive sub-licensing rights to the following patents issued in the United States, and all of their corresponding foreign patents: Cryptographic Apparatus and Method ("Diffie-Hellman")............................... No. 4,200,770 Public Key Cryptographic Apparatus and Method ("Hellman-Merkle").................... No. 4,218,582 Cryptographic Communications System and Method ("RSA")................................... No. 4,405,829 Exponential Cryptographic Apparatus and Method ("Hellman-Pohlig").................... No. 4,424,414 These patents are stated by PKP to cover all known methods of practicing the art of Public Key encryption, including the variations collectively known as El Gamal.