1994-06-03 - Re: more info from talk at MIT yesterday.

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From: smb@research.att.com
To: perry@imsi.com
Message Hash: e36b1e1f5cf537b2196885af6988cc8f6ee80e0fc304e5ec0c922c29bd1778dd
Message ID: <9406031506.AA08491@toad.com>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1994-06-03 15:06:26 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 3 Jun 94 08:06:26 PDT

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From: smb@research.att.com
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 94 08:06:26 PDT
To: perry@imsi.com
Subject: Re: more info from talk at MIT yesterday.
Message-ID: <9406031506.AA08491@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


	 
	 Bill Sommerfeld says:
	 > They also confirmed Tom Knight's suspicions about what they're going
	 > to do when someone reverse engineers the chip and publishes the
	 > Skipjack algorithm & the family key: they've got a patent applicatio
	n
	 > filed, under a secrecy order; if the algorithm is published, they'll
	 > lift the secrecy order and have the patent issued, and use that to g
	o
	 > after anyone making a compatible version.

	 Since when can the government patent its work? I thought that works
	 produced by government agencies could not be copyrighted or patented.

The government can patent things, but not copyright them.

	 In any case, they cannot refuse to license a patent, so this isn't
	 real protection anyway. (The hope behind people patenting things they
	 may release in the future is to make it commercially less attractive,
	 not to utterly prevent use.)

Why can't they refuse to license a patent?





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