I've embedded a couple of comments that might be useful. 1.4 Amusingly Adi Shamir (A from RSA) isn't even a US citizen, he's an Shamir is the 'S' from RSA, not the 'A'. 1.6 Because the publication was a rush job due to the NSA, R,S & A and the later formed PKP and RSADSI lose patent rights to RSA crypto outside the US. This is because most places outside the US, you have to obtain a patent *before* publication, where as in the US, you have one year from the publication date to file for patents. This also had implications for PGP later This is only half true. US Patent law was developed independently of most of the rest of the world's, and allowed patents like this. The Australian patent office would, at the time, have rejected the patent anyway on the grounds that you can't patent a mathematical formula. ====================================================================== 3 USG decides they don't like PRZ ====================================================================== You haven't defined USG as an acronym yet. To me it means Unix Support Group. It does come clear later though. regards, Greg.