17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
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. Adam