-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Sat, 27 Jan 1996, James A. Donald wrote:
When do patents expire on Rabin's public key scheme?
RSA claims that the Diffie Helman patent, which expires on the 29th of April, 1997, covers all public key cryptography.
Actually, I think that the Merkle Hellman patent is the one considered to cover all public key cryptography. RSADSI claims that Diffie Hellman also includes ElGamal, but Cylink now owns the Diffie Hellman patent and I don't know if they consider it to also cover ElGamal.
ElGamal and Rabin are unpatented.
Schmeier says that ElGamal will be free of patent restrictions after that, but he says nothing about Rabin.
In _Applied Cryptography_, there is no mention of any patents covering Rabin. Elliptic curve public key encryption schemes are not covered by any public key cryptography schemes, so it is possible that Rabin is also not covered under any patents. - --Mark =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= markm@voicenet.com | finger -l for PGP key 0xf9b22ba5 http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ | bd24d08e3cbb53472054fa56002258d5 PGP: Because sometimes, a _Captain Midnight_ decoder ring simply isn't enough. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMQum/rZc+sv5siulAQHNXgP/VlS2Q0zGtbZ4qhpWTb4BWdPAEDe+tq15 Ejh/2h/q0xMB0h560DjKAq9OmDLFpEBQf4rXprL5Y7rHeb0t6W7Rh2k9oS5rRlfu wTJEuAMoRyQXwS32Zx2A9OvyPFHZWXMZNyXDI/Bq4F9QyQxzFpvCRd7pBJgHyS81 3efUT9RZ9vw= =NJDk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----