RC2, though, as 256 bytes of seemingly random data at the head of it, in a permutation table. This is clearly not any idea, but a bit of text. This text would have to be copied to any interoperable RC2. (You could surely use some different permutation, and probably most of the 256! permutations would be equally secure, but would not interoperate with RC2). I would expect that this copying of text be held to be a violation of copyright.
What about "merger"? If there's only one way to write a table to make it interoperable, could it be ruled that the idea has merged with its expression and thus be legal to copy? -- Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, karromde@nyx.cs.du.edu; http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~arromdee) "Snow?" "It's sort of like white, lumpy, rain." --Gilligan's Island