Diffie-Hellman 4,200,770 Sept. 6, 1977 Apr. 29, 1980 Sept. 6, 1997 Hellman-Merkle 4,218,582 Oct. 6, 1977 Aug. 19, 1980 Oct. 6, 1997 RSA 4,405,829 Dec. 14, 1977 Sept. 20, 1983 Sept. 20, 2000
So who's planning on throwing a big party on Sept. 6th? Will Jim Bizos be celebrating? :-)
Well, Jim Bizdos now has an unlimited license to the DH and HM patents, due to a recent settlement with Cylink, so he probably won't be celebrating. I'd wait 'til the October 6th date for the real party, RSA and Cylink's lawyers have always claimed the HM gave them a claim to all of public key cryptography...that's the one I've been waiting for, and it's only another month :-) This is going to be a very good year. If you look at Roger Schlafly's home page, http://bbs.cruzio.com/~schlafly you'll see that he's been fighting these guys for years; and he concedes now that even with his herculean efforts to move the process along, the trial probably won't come to a head before the patents expire. I'd love to see his estimate of how much their lawyers have spent on this over the years... -- Thaddeus Beier thad@hammerhead.com Visual Effects Supervisor 408) 287-6770 Hammerhead Productions http://www.got.net/people/thad