[3748] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Quick ping about Surety Technologies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Tue Dec 8 14:04:12 1998
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 06:25:20 -0500
To: dcsb@ai.mit.edu, cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 00:17:17 -0500 (EST)
From: <Somebody>
To: rah@shipwright.com
Subject: Re: Quick ping about Surety Technologies
> *That*'s interesting. Haven't heard it before. If you want, I'll bounce it
> around.
If you would, that would be interesting. The patent info on their web
site includes:
Method for secure timestamping of digital documents.
U.S. Patent No. 5,136,647, issued August 4, 1992.
U.S. Patent Re. 34,954, reissued May 30, 1995.
The initial patent issue covers a variety of fundamental
technology and algorithmic components of digital
timestamping. More specifically, the claims cover:
* Any use of an outside party's digital signature to timestamp
a document.
* The "hash-and-sign" method in which the outside party receives
the one-way hash of the document to be timestamped.
I distrust software patents, but even that aside, these sound really
broad to me. More info at <http://www.surety.com/patent_overview.html>.
<snip>
<Somebody's .sig>
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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
