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- Newsgroups: sci.crypt
- Path: sparky!uunet!nwnexus!ken
- From: ken@halcyon.com (Ken Pizzini)
- Subject: Re: Public Key Patents
- Message-ID: <1992Nov18.123917.13191@nwnexus.WA.COM>
- Sender: sso@nwnexus.WA.COM (System Security Officer)
- Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
- References: <1992Nov17.055106.5154@netcom.com> <PHR.92Nov17033415@napa.telebit.com> <PCL.92Nov18102622@black.oxford.ac.uk>
- Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 12:39:17 GMT
- Lines: 23
-
- In article <PCL.92Nov18102622@black.oxford.ac.uk> pcl@oxford.ac.uk (Paul Leyland) writes:
- >In article <PHR.92Nov17033415@napa.telebit.com> phr@telebit.com (Paul Rubin) writes:
- > Regarding RSA in particular, remember also that the motivation of
- > patents is to provide an incentive to invent: the public gets the
- > benefit of the invention in exchange for the inventor getting a
- > limited monopoly. But RSA was invented without this incentive (we
- > know this because nobody thought to apply for patents until after the
- > invention was already published, which is why it is not patented in
- > Europe, where applications must be filed before the invention is
- > published). So in exchange for the monopoly, the public in this
- > case got *nothing*.
- >
- >Oh, I don't know about that. The European public got rather a lot,
- >and don't even have to pay royalties. Come to that, PKP don't even
- >have a monopoly. A limited monopoly, limited to within the US, yes.
- >
- >"The public" != "The population of the US".
-
- Which makes the the RSA patent even more absurd -- foreign nationals
- get to use RSA for free while US taxpayers, who helped fund the
- research, have to pay royalties!
-
- --Ken Pizzini
-
