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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:15:55 ADT
Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com)
Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:53:01 +1000 (EST)
On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Bill Stewart wrote:
> At 05:24 PM 3/9/98 +1000, Eric Young wrote:
> >Looks like CAST-128 will probably be it, with the option of RC5-32/12 for
> >non-USA people.
>
> It's not clear that RC5 will be a legal option for non-USA people.
> Some algorithms, like RSA, are unpatentable because they're disclosed
> to the public before the patent applications are made,
> but I don't know where RSA* Inc. has applied for patents -
> they may be in queue in Australia and Europe, or they may not.
My understanding is that Patents can be disclosed, it is trade secrets that
cannot. RSA Inc claimed trade secret on RC2 and RC4 but they were 'disclosed'
anyway. RSA Inc now defends RC4 via the 'Trademark' defence, of threatening
people who use the name RC4 without their blessing.
RSA and RC5 are protected by software patents, which to the best of my
information, are only granted in the USA, Japan and some European countries.
Australia and quite a large proportion of the rest of the world do not have
them.
Software patents are a bit of a can of worms, have a look at
http://www.base.com/software-patents/examples.html
for a few examples of the extreem end of the spectrum....
eric
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:15:55 ADT