From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 94 11:30:53 PDT
To: smb@research.att.com
Subject: Re: Lawsuits Against PKP
In-Reply-To: <9408011547.AA22209@toad.com>
Message-ID: <9408011830.AA08636@snark.imsi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



smb@research.att.com says:
> 	 Two lawsuits were recently filed in federal court, northern district
> 	 of Calif, which may cripple Public Key Partners.
> 
> 	 Cylink v. RSA Data Security, C-94-02332-CW, June 30, 1994, San Fran.
> 	 It alleges that the RSA patent is invalid.  RSA Data had denied Cylink
> 	 a patent license.
> 
> This one is really fascinating -- Cylink is one of the owners of PKP, along
> with RSADSI...

"Owners" is not strictly speaking the case -- they are a partner in
PKP. Since the PKP partnership agreement is secret (or at least I am
told it is secret), it is impossible to determine precisely what the
rules of the partnership are, but I had assumed that free cross
licensing had been part of it. I believe that Cylink has used RSA as
part of various security products in the past, so they appear to have
*HAD* a license. If Bruce has access to the exact language in the
suit, it would be of interest to hear what it says.  (Since the court
papers are all public domain, perhaps a person with a scanner might
want to put them on line...)

Perry