Re: UK spooks invent RSA, DH in 1973
Peter Gutmann wrote:
There's an interesting paper at http://www.cesg.gov.uk/ellisint.htm which claims that UK spooks invented both RSA and DH in 1973 and 1974 respectively.
We've converted the Ellis Postscript doc to HTML: http://jya.com/ellisdoc.htm
On Tue, 16 Dec 1997, John Young wrote:
Peter Gutmann wrote:
There's an interesting paper at http://www.cesg.gov.uk/ellisint.htm which claims that UK spooks invented both RSA and DH in 1973 and 1974 respectively.
We've converted the Ellis Postscript doc to HTML:
Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments? Jim Burnes
Jim Burnes wrote: | > http://jya.com/ellisdoc.htm | | Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments? I think its a really bad precedent to revoking patents based on the basis of secret documents released after the fact. If you believe in patents, then having your work nullifiable by government claims is a bad idea. The work of DH and RSA was clearly original and non-obvious. Since the government grants software patents, DH and RSA are patentable. I'm not claiming that the Ellis paper is a hoax, but consider this scenario--Cypherpunks Alice and Bob bought the RSA patent in 1980. Incorporate a Cayman Islands company to sell the patent rights. Sells to millions of cypherpunks on a non discriminatory basis. They're getting ready for an IPO. Uncle Sam, who readlly dislikes Alice and Bob, releases a document showing prior art. The patent is thrown out, along with Alice & Bob's plans to retire. Allowing this sort of thing is clearly not in the interests of rule of law. No process of discovery could reasonably have expected to turn up these formerly classified documents. Alice, Bob, their investors, can not evaluate the value of their patents because Uncle Sam can destroy them with small forgeries. Feh! Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
On Wed, 17 Dec 1997, Adam Shostack wrote:
Jim Burnes wrote:
| > http://jya.com/ellisdoc.htm | | Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments?
I think its a really bad precedent to revoking patents based on the basis of secret documents released after the fact. If you believe in patents, then having your work nullifiable by government claims is a bad idea.
I was not advocating that they should be revoked, just curious as to whether they could be. But your analysis makes sense. It would be simple for the government, within the context of the secrets act, to simply crank out phony secrets and destroy the financial viability of companies they don't like. Interesting.... Jim
At 1:20 PM -0700 12/17/97, Jim Burnes wrote:
On Wed, 17 Dec 1997, Adam Shostack wrote:
Jim Burnes wrote:
| > http://jya.com/ellisdoc.htm | | Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments?
I think its a really bad precedent to revoking patents based on the basis of secret documents released after the fact. If you believe in patents, then having your work nullifiable by government claims is a bad idea.
I was not advocating that they should be revoked, just curious as to whether they could be.
But your analysis makes sense. It would be simple for the government, within the context of the secrets act, to simply crank out phony secrets and destroy the financial viability of companies they don't like.
The rationale involves a lot more than just the _government_ doing this. If patents are to make any sense at all, then there cannot be a continuing series of "disclosures" of private diaries, private letters, lab notebooks, and other items unavailable for public examination at the time the patent was granted. (I'm not defending patents. I believe they've outlived their usefullness. And technology has made them easy to evade. Etc. Another topic.) "Submarine" patents are especially odious. (Where applicants keep amending their claims to cover new developments, all in secret. This was how the _alleged_ "inventor of the microprocessor" was able to amend his application for almost 20 years before the Patent Office in their ignorance granted him a patent!) The forgery issue (e.g., people backdating reports or modifying old papers) is of course solvable with digital time-stamping services, though the "brilliant penny scam" remains a concern. (BPS--register or time-stamp N variants of some idea, and then only reveal the particular variant one wishes, showing one to have invented something, or predicted the future, etc. When it costs little or nothing to register/stamp some instance, the BPS must always be a concern.) --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
Adam Shostack wrote:
Jim Burnes wrote:
| > http://jya.com/ellisdoc.htm | | Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments?
I think its a really bad precedent to revoking patents based on the basis of secret documents released after the fact. If you believe in patents, then having your work nullifiable by government claims is a bad idea. ...
Maybe in the future this could be possible ... Let's say that NSA does hashes of all their scientific papers and timestamp them with some third party recognized company. This way NSA would be able to prove that they had an original idea even if they claim this only after someone else has reinvented it. -- Vicente Silveira - vicente@certisign.com.br CertiSign Certificadora Digital Ltda.
While this does prevent making things up out of whole cloth, it does not address the possibility that the hash has been broken by the agency, nor the possibility that documents will be selectively released by the agency to hurt certain parties. None of this addresses the real flaw, which is the inability to value your patent if theres a chance that a party will remove the secrecy in whihc they invented it, and thus nullify your patent. The whole prior art argument is that you could reasonably have heard about this other thing, or that the patent office could have found it, and thus your patent should not have been granted. If the patent office had examiners with clearence who checked patents agianst various government claims and denied the patent on the ground that there exists prior, classified art, that would be vaugely fine; it would be a predictable risk as the patent is pending. Adam Vicente Silveira wrote: | Adam Shostack wrote: | > Jim Burnes wrote: | > | > http://jya.com/ellisdoc.htm | > | | > | Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments? | > | > I think its a really bad precedent to revoking patents based | > on the basis of secret documents released after the fact. If you | > believe in patents, then having your work nullifiable by government | > claims is a bad idea. | > ... | | Maybe in the future this could be possible ... Let's say that | NSA does hashes of all their scientific papers and timestamp | them with some third party recognized company. This way NSA would | be able to prove that they had an original idea even if they claim | this only after someone else has reinvented it. -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
Adam Shostack wrote:
While this does prevent making things up out of whole cloth, it does not address the possibility that the hash has been broken by the agency, nor the possibility that documents will be selectively released by the agency to hurt certain parties.
None of this addresses the real flaw, which is the inability to value your patent if theres a chance that a party will remove the secrecy in whihc they invented it, and thus nullify your patent.
The whole prior art argument is that you could reasonably have heard about this other thing, or that the patent office could have found it, and thus your patent should not have been granted.
If the patent office had examiners with clearence who checked patents agianst various government claims and denied the patent on the ground that there exists prior, classified art, that would be vaugely fine; it would be a predictable risk as the patent is pending.
Adam
I agree with you, I just mentioned that it was technically feasible, but, as you pointed out, the ethical and legal aspects of this issue makes this kind of ( submarine ? ) patents undesirable. -- Vicente Silveira - vicente@certisign.com.br CertiSign Certificadora Digital Ltda.
At 7:14 PM -0200 12/18/1997, Vicente Silveira wrote:
Adam Shostack wrote:
Jim Burnes wrote:
| > http://jya.com/ellisdoc.htm | | Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments?
I think its a really bad precedent to revoking patents based on the basis of secret documents released after the fact. If you believe in patents, then having your work nullifiable by government claims is a bad idea. ...
Maybe in the future this could be possible ... Let's say that NSA does hashes of all their scientific papers and timestamp them with some third party recognized company. This way NSA would be able to prove that they had an original idea even if they claim this only after someone else has reinvented it.
I believe the GATT we signed prohibits so-called submarine patents which are filed or issued significantly after their date of inception, frequently due to delaying tactics by the filer in the patent office. If so, no gov't newly filed claims should affect the issued patents. --Steve PGP mail preferred, see http://www.pgp.com and http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html RSA fingerprint: FE90 1A95 9DEA 8D61 812E CCA9 A44A FBA9 RSA key: http://keys.pgp.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=index&search=0x55C78B0D --------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Schear | tel: (702) 658-2654 CEO | fax: (702) 658-2673 Lammar Laboratories | 7075 West Gowan Road | Suite 2148 | Las Vegas, NV 89129 | Internet: schear@lvdi.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <v03102807b0be18de66e0@[208.129.55.202]>, on 12/17/97 at 07:11 PM, Steve Schear <schear@lvdi.net> said:
At 7:14 PM -0200 12/18/1997, Vicente Silveira wrote:
Adam Shostack wrote:
Jim Burnes wrote:
| > http://jya.com/ellisdoc.htm | | Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments?
I think its a really bad precedent to revoking patents based on the basis of secret documents released after the fact. If you believe in patents, then having your work nullifiable by government claims is a bad idea. ...
Maybe in the future this could be possible ... Let's say that NSA does hashes of all their scientific papers and timestamp them with some third party recognized company. This way NSA would be able to prove that they had an original idea even if they claim this only after someone else has reinvented it.
I believe the GATT we signed prohibits so-called submarine patents which are filed or issued significantly after their date of inception, frequently due to delaying tactics by the filer in the patent office. If so, no gov't newly filed claims should affect the issued patents.
Fuck GATT!! This is one of the reasons that I opposed GATT as it subverts the Constitutional powers of Congress to International bodies that I had no say in electing!! (even if I did I don't want some fuckup from the UN or the EEO determining US law.) Do not take this as an advocacy for submarine patents, as it is not. Personally I hope that the patent issue will be a big enough of one to piss Washington off enough to pull out of GATT!! - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a-sha1 Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBNJmVWY9Co1n+aLhhAQKd5AP9FmeejE29ispYj4q6jPrAQXxNKq4N9ity cGl+kzekFk6lX24hE5JWrKlvgZDXvVj7OCf+FeBKKxN6ri3wk5kCX3DiG5jI48qG q6j8f0jGxtXRMtogvr+b7imgefqKOZTPG0U/sCK1d8sAj1GInBm+tcOGGyxki/Fi zWgcn2syY68= =OWlS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Wed, 17 Dec 1997, Steve Schear wrote:
I believe the GATT we signed prohibits so-called submarine patents which are filed or issued significantly after their date of inception, frequently due to delaying tactics by the filer in the patent office. If so, no gov't newly filed claims should affect the issued patents.
Really??? Wow. You actually signed GATT? You and who else were you referring to? ______________________________________________________________________ Jon Galt e-mail: jongalt@pinn.net website: http://www.pinn.net/~jongalt/ PGP public key available on my website. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. ______________________________________________________________________
At 10:18 AM 12/17/97 -0700, Jim Burnes wrote:
On Tue, 16 Dec 1997, John Young wrote:
Peter Gutmann wrote:
There's an interesting paper at http://www.cesg.gov.uk/ellisint.htm which claims that UK spooks invented both RSA and DH in 1973 and 1974 respectively.
We've converted the Ellis Postscript doc to HTML:
Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments?
Jim Burnes
Prior art in the public eye, yes. Secret unpatented stuff can be patented when described in the open the first time. ------------------------------------------------------------ David Honig Orbit Technology honig@otc.net Intaanetto Jigyoubu M-16 : Don Quixote :: PGP : Louis Freeh Let freedom ring (or screech at 28.8)
At 10:18 AM 12/17/97 -0700, you wrote:
Can patents be revoked due to prior art arguments?
Jim Burnes
The short answer is yes. In the case here however it is not possible. When someone files for a US patent the only kind of foreign activity or prior art the PTO can use to reject its claims is disclosure of the invention in a printed publication or a foreign patent (the invention can even be in use abroad but it will not affect the US application). This also applies to later claims of invalidity by defendants being sued for infringement by the patent holder. When the US patent here was filed there was no prior art to speak of, inventions kept secret by those in the US or abroad could not be used (not only because the PTO did not know about them). 102(b) does allow an opportunity for an inventor who has kept their invention secret to apply for a patent when they realize that someone has 'reinvented' it, but they must file for a patent within a year of it becoming public or the opportunity is lost. So, the NSA or whomever can come forward within that time period if they want a patent but in doing so they will be required to not only prove the priority of their invention but to make its details public. The bottom line is that secret information can never be used to prevent a patent from issuing. The rationale behind the patent system is to grant monopolies to inventors in return for making their invention public (which occurs when a patent issues) which will spur further innovation etc.. "Prior Art" is by definition public, a piece of prior art is part of the known 'art' of whatever field is involved. The only reason I am able to spin this out is because I took my patents and trade secrets exam today, so take it with a pinch of salt. ;-) I've attached the relevant section of the Patent Act below. On a related note I have a copy of that "Data Embedding" patent issued to a Los Alamos Scientist that was mentioned on the list a few weeks ago. I don't know enough about stego to give a good description of what is novel about it so maybe someone else might want to take a look. It is a few pages of specification and claims with tiffs of source code embodying their invention so its a little big. Julian Burke 35 USCA s 102 102. Conditions for patentability; novelty and loss of right to patent A person shall be entitled to a patent unless-- (a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States, or (c) he has abandoned the invention, or (d) the invention was first patented or caused to be patented, or was the subject of an inventor's certificate, by the applicant or his legal representatives or assigns in a foreign country prior to the date of the application for patent in this country on an application for patent or inventor's certificate filed more than twelve months before the filing of the application in the United States, or (e) the invention was described in a patent granted on an application for patent by another filed in the United States before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or on an international application by another who has fulfilled the requirements of paragraphs (1), (2), and (4) of section 371(c) of this title before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (f) he did not himself invent the subject matter sought to be patented, or (g) before the applicant's invention thereof the invention was made in this country by another who had not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed it. In determining priority of invention there shall be considered not only the respective dates of conception and reduction to practice of the invention, but also the reasonable diligence of one who was first to conceive and last to reduce to practice, from a time prior to conception by the other.
participants (10)
-
Adam Shostack -
David Honig -
jburke＠nh.ultranet.com -
Jim Burnes -
John Young -
Jon Galt -
Steve Schear -
Tim May -
Vicente Silveira -
William H. Geiger III