Smartcard patents

[Steve Schear]

http://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000121.html



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Cryptography Research, the California company that announced the
discovery of differential power analysis around late 1997, have picked
up a swag of patents covering defences against DPA.  One can't read too
much into the event itself, as presumably they filed all these a long
time ago, way back when, and once filed you just have to stay the
distance.  It's what companies do, over that side, and if you didn't
predict it, you were naive (I didn't, and I was).

What is more significant is the changed market place for smart cards.
The Europeans dominated this field due to their institutional
structure.  Big contracts from large telcos and banks lead to lots of
support, all things that were lacking in the fragmented market in the
US.  Yet the Europeans kept their secrets too close to the chest, and
now they are paying for the vulnerability.

CR managed to discover and publish a lot of the stuff that the
Europeans thought they had secretly to themselves.  Now CR has patented
it.  What a spectacular transfer of rights - even if the European labs
can prove they invented it first (I've seen some confidential stuff on
this from my smart card days) because they kept it secret, they lose
it.  Secrets don't enjoy any special protection.

Security by obscurity loses in more ways than one.  What's more,
royalties and damages may be due, just like in the Polaroid film case.
When both sides had the secret, it didn't matter who invented it, it
was who patented it first that won.

We will probably see the switch of a lot more smart card work across to
CR's labs, and a commensurate rush by the European labs to patent
everything they have left.  Just a speculative guess, mind.  With those
patents in hand, CR's future looks bright, although whether this will
prove to be drain or a boon to the smart card world remains to be seen.