From: "Mark O. Aldrich" <maldrich@grci.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 10:20:30 -0700 (PDT)
To: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: Re: Royalties
In-Reply-To: <v03007807ae8a130d973b@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <Pine.SCO.3.93.961016125929.11688E-100000@grctechs.va.grci.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:

> At 7:32 PM -0400 10/15/96, Mark O. Aldrich wrote:
> 
> >You cannot commercialize PGP whether you pay Ascom-Tech any royalties or
> >not.  Phil Zimmermann grated an exclusive license to ViaCrypt, Inc. a
> >number of years ago to be the sole commercial version of PGP.  In the mean
> >time, PGP Inc. was formed and has acquired ViaCrypt.  Thus, PGP Inc. now
> >holds the exclusive license on commercial PGP products.  Just by chance,
> >Phil Zimmermann is the CEO of PGP Inc.
> 
> It seems a bit strange that PGP Inc. is so fastidious about enforcing
> intellectual property claims, given the treatment of RSA Data Security
> Inc.'s similar property claims a few years ago.
> 

Is there, however, a notion of legitimacy here?  In other words, are PGP's
claims valid while RSA's are not?  I'm not talking under "The Law", but
under notions of what's good and what's not.  Many would assert that RSA's
IP claims are overstated, invalid, way too far reaching in scope, and that
they're being greedy bastards who are not telling the truth about what
happened with the agreement with Phil.  PGP, as far as I know, hasn't
started being "fastidious" about IP claims (in fact, I don't think their
position has changed at all), and bases their assertions on Phil's rather
straight-forward PGP license and his basic assertion that he owns the
rights to the encryption software called "PGP" and he don't want nobody
else selling it except he and his licensees.

(not taking sides here - just holding up one perspective for discussion)

> In other words, I don't worry for one nanosecond about "infringing" on PGP
> Inc.'s claimed property rights.

Not to pick a fight, but you generally take that position with most
IP rights, correct?  I _think_ you've voiced opinions that align with some
anti-copyright positions in the past, but I may be wrong.  Stepping aside
from that for the moment, why would you feel that PGP's property rights
are not respectable?

> 
> Nothing personal.
> 

Ditto.

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