[4579] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: idea, cast as used in PGP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ben Kavanagh)
Fri Apr 30 18:34:19 1999
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 12:33:48 -0700
From: Ben Kavanagh <ben@spyrus.com>
To: Mike Stay <staym@accessdata.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <3729F207.47D7@accessdata.com>; from Mike Stay on Fri, Apr 30, 1999 at 12:10:15PM -0600
It depends on how the patent is defined. The patent might explicitly
say used for protecting data on stored media. If you can find a way
to say you're using it in a way not described by the patent then you
have a good chance of getting away with it. Bottom line is you have
to read the patent to see what all are the circumstances it explicitly
covers. I doubt there is a general "decryption's OK" paradigm in
relation to crypto patents.
Cheers
Ben Kavanagh
On Fri, Apr 30, 1999 at 12:10:15PM -0600, Mike Stay wrote:
> I think CAST-256 is the default symmetric encryption used in PGP 5.x,
> 6.x freeware; the openPGP draft supports a bunch of other algs including
> IDEA, which is patented. Could we charge for a product that simply uses
> those algorithms to get the secret key from the keyring (we're not
> encrypting anything with symmetric keys) without paying royalties?
> --
> Mike Stay
> Cryptographer / Programmer
> AccessData Corp.
> mailto:staym@accessdata.com
>
