1994-09-15 - Re: RC4 Legal Issues

Header Data

From: Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>
To: hughes@ah.com
Message Hash: be19cde8ad85b9eba5aa81a8e50b90ac8c9fa0d446cd1676c188fbbbe3b7c85c
Message ID: <199409151806.LAA19261@servo.qualcomm.com>
Reply To: <9409151354.AA03733@ah.com>
UTC Datetime: 1994-09-15 18:06:11 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 15 Sep 94 11:06:11 PDT

Raw message

From: Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 94 11:06:11 PDT
To: hughes@ah.com
Subject: Re: RC4 Legal Issues
In-Reply-To: <9409151354.AA03733@ah.com>
Message-ID: <199409151806.LAA19261@servo.qualcomm.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>A trade secret is just that, a secret.  For parties unrelated to the
>holder of the secret, once it's no longer a secret, it's not a secret,
>and the former holder of the secret has no protection at all.  In
>other words, if you're not, say, a BSAFE licensee, you are free to use
>the alleged RC4 algorithm.

This was my understanding *before* the recent jury decision in the
Microsoft vs Stac Electronics countersuit. When Stac sued Microsoft
for infringing their patents on disk compression, Microsoft
countersued Stac for trade secret infringement for having
reverse-engineered some hidden system calls in MS-DOS. Not only did
the jury uphold Stac's bogus software patent, but they also found in
favor of Microsoft on their ridiculous trade secret accusation!

Needless to say, this creates a very troubling precedent. Now you can
now apparently infringe a trade secret merely by examining fully
public information (e.g., commercially available object code.)

Phil





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