My meeting with Chaum (Also: ecash full anonymity and a legal question)

[Jüri Kaljundi]

 Sat, 18 May 1996, Ian Goldberg wrote:

> I am, in fact, going to Canada, and was considering writing a version of
> the library while I was there.  Now, Chaum has a patent on 2 lines of
> code (blinding the coin before it goes to the bank, and unblinding the
> value returns).  Believe it or not, I would like to stay within the law.

BTW why isn't some other company besides DigiCash selling similar software
product as the Ecash mint & client? Are there some international patents
or trade secrets involved? There is a real market for similar software
solution and it should not be too hard to write, considering it is a
financial system and there is big money involved.

Public domain ecash software would be an interesting effort to accomplish.
In case of full source availability it should be possible to develop
commercial systems based on public software, it might even be more secure
than commercial software which source is available for review to only
certain persons.

There is also a problem with Digicash licencing: they licence only to
banks, and usually only to one bank in each country. I believe there are
also many companies that are not banks, who would also like to issue ecash
for specific purposes. Setting up an separate company issuing electronic
cash, not connected to any of the existing banks, is something that
probably will happen sooner or later. Of course there are problems of
legislation and clients trusting the company, but those are not problems
that the software manufacturer like Digicash should decide.

Jüri Kaljundi
jk at stallion.ee
AS Stallion