From: thad@hammerhead.com (Thaddeus J. Beier)
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 95 15:00:48 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Cylink
Message-ID: <199509192138.OAA07353@hammerhead.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> WSJ, Sept 19, 1995.
> 
> Cylink Claims Right To Key Technology Involving
> Encryption
> 
> ...
> 
> Sunnyvale, Calif. - A Silicon Valley company asserted a
> legal claim to a key technology for protecting electronic
> commerce, following an arbitration ruling.
> 
>                                  ... The arbitrators
> ruled that RSA hasn't had the right to sublicense the
> Stanford patents since 1990.
> 
> Cylink said it would seek royalties from companies that
> have licensed software code from RSA and are
> redistributing it, arguing that they are infringing the
> Stanford patents.
> 

This was reported in the San Jose Mercury News today,
as well.  They reported that Cylink licenses the patents
for $50,000.  I'm assuming that the main patent in question
is the Diffie-Hellmann patent (only 1 year and 7 months to
DH Freedom Day!).  Since PKP (and Bidzos, now president of
RSA) always said that DH covered all public key encryption,
it would seem that any RSA licensee would also need a license
from Cylink.

The Merc article said that RSA's and Cylink's interpretation
of the arbitrators' ruling were completely opposite.  I haven't
seen a copy of the ruling.  The Merc says that "Outside observers
tend to take RSA's view of things."

I'm stunned that an arbitrator could make a uniterpretable ruling
on something so cut and dried, but then, IANAL.

I've called both PKP and RSA, I haven't been able to talk to anybody
about it yet.

thad
-- Thaddeus Beier                   email:  thad@hammerhead.com
   Technology Development             vox:  408) 286-3376
   Hammerhead Productions             fax:  408) 292-8624