From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 95 16:33:06 PDT
To: Peter Williams <peter@verisign.com>
Subject: Re: Software Patents are Freezing Evolution of Products
In-Reply-To: <199510091730.KAA07041@dustin.verisign.com>
Message-ID: <199510092332.TAA24591@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Peter Williams writes:
> The thesis [that patents are bad] is fundamentally flawed in the
> case of publickey applications which provide or exploit digital
> signatures, as its assumptions are false, patently.

And you wouldn't have any financial interest in this position, would
you?

Frankly, I don't believe that ANY patents are legitimate, but thats
not a cypherpunk topic.

However, the following is: I'll be throwing a very, very big party
when the public key patents expire in about two years to celebrate the
freeing of modern cryptography. I have yet to decide whether to wait
until both the Diffie-Hellman patent and the patent on public key
itself have expired or hold it after the first goes south, as there is
still some time to wait until the blessed day.

Perry