From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 09:12:57 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Public Key Royalties
Message-ID: <199805141609.MAA22580@camel8.mindspring.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In a recent GAO report on governmental funding of university research
there is this note:

   In fiscal year 1996, the commercialization of the public key encryption 
   method, which was developed under grants from the Navy and NSF, 
   resulted in $271,875 in royalties to MIT.

Does this refer to RSA or PGP? Did the Navy underwrite RSA's PK work?
If so does the USG have a secret stake in PGP, Network Associates
and RSA?

More: did the Navy guide PK researchers based on the secret UK PK work 
before Diffie-Hellman?

The full report:

   http://jya.com/rced-98-126.txt  (184K)