a conscious being, Gregory Aharonian wrote:

From srctran@world.std.com Sat Aug 20 07:08:04 1994 Subject: PATNEWS: PKP cryptography members suing each other - DUCK!!!!

For some time, the US government's plans to come up with a standard for digital signatures for electronic documents has run into a variety of problems, one of which is the fact that some of the algorithms the government wants to use are patented and in private hands, with threats of infringement lawsuits. In fact, the government recently agreed to pay an MIT professor royalties in return for use of his patent. Other patents involved are held by the consortium Public Key Partners (PKP) of Sunnyvale, California. Well as it turns out, members of PKP are now suing each other (isn't patenting fun :-). One member, Cylink (Sunnyvale) is suing another member, RSA Data Security (Redwood City, CA) over RSA's use of some MIT technology (MIT also being a member of PKP, along with Stanford). Cylink filed suit in June, and the squabble could lead to the break up of PKP, which will either simplify or complicate the use of their technology in the government's DSS digital signature standard. Stay tuned. Greg Aharonian Internet Patent News Service (for subscription info, send 'help' to patents@world.std.com) (for prior art search services info, send 'prior' to patents@world.std.com)