Bob forwards:
At the EFF end-of-RSA ball in SF last night David Chaum stood up and said a few enigmatic words: "Great to be here, and what's really important now is that we all come together and have a common approach. I've looked at the old ecash and, (wry smile) there were a few problems. But I've got some ideas about how to fix it and make it available in a way which avoids the kind of wars we've had in the past. I had wanted to make more of an announcement tonight, but the legal stuff is (as always) taking longer than I'd anticipated. So, thank you." [applause]
Pretty interesting. I wonder if he has an interesting new patent unencumbered way to do ecash, and if he's going to make it patent free. Chaum, Brands and now Chaum II. All speculation, of course, but that'd be a real interesting shake-out of the ecash patent minefield, and much kudos would be afford Dr Chaum who currently gets perhaps more blame than fair for DigiCash burn out. Perhaps a protocol by him, with his patent background, might get more attention than Wagner et al's pk MAC + ZKP of non-coin marking, if he could organise some physical entity around it. Did anyone who was there get a better idea of what Dr Chaum is up to? Actually if (1) is really patent unencumbered, what it needs is some organisation (a suggestion Bob) to provide demos, business presentations and offer suit friendly support and legal interpretations of the protocol's patent unemcumberedness, and it could perhaps itself compete head on with Chaum I patents now held by ECashTechnologies, and to some extent with Brands/Zero-Knowledge. You've got to provide suits something to hold onto in the physical world -- they really want to part with money, so you've got to construct something to sell them a license to: a software library, technical support from your collection of cryptographers or something, anything that allows them to feel corporately assured. ECashRumorMonger