At 04:58 PM 4/9/99 -0400, Vin McLellan wrote:
>
> The discussion of alternative names for "RSA" has been an amazing
>and entertaining carnival, spawned by a wildly exaggerated interpretation of
>a 3/1/99 SDTI letter to the P1363 working group. SDTI, RSA's parent firm,
>for which I have been a consultant for many years, never said they were
>going to restrict the use of the term RSA by real people, or even members of
>standards groups.
Vin:
1) the interpretation *by* the working group -- which, in the end,
is all that matters -- has not been exaggerated... and our response
needs to be appropriate and consistent with our responsibility for
the standard
2) that should be "RSADSI's parent firm" not "RSA's parent firm"
(your slip is noted with appreciative humor)
3) SDTI may not have said *they* would "restrict the use of RSA by
real people," but RSADSI has a history of doing exactly that going
back at least 12 years (yes, Schlafly and I are real people as well
as members of P1363); a legitimate fear is that, once the patent
expires, this will be the preferred means of stifling competition
4) the P1363 working group has no reason to believe that SDTI will
be any less litigious in the future than RSADSI was in the past...
in fact, there is considerable recent evidence to the contrary.
> The RSA brand name issue, as SDTI sees it, is whether commercial
>competitors will be allowed to mislead consumers as to who crafted a module
>of implementation code.
I find it simply amazing that you presume to speak for SDTI (as not
even Margaret Seif seems to be doing that very well), but since you've
assumed that role...
>anyone curious about SDTI's actual claims about RSA as a brand
>name should check out SDTI's new letter to IEEE at:
<http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1363/letters/SecurityDynamics2.jpg>
I've checked out this letter and I'm still curious... and confused.
It says "... we ... accept that ANY party creating a product which
conforms with the P1363 standard will be able to state that the
product incorporates the RSA algorithm..." (emphasis mine)
Since you're speaking for SDTI now, was it in fact Margaret's intent
to provide Schlafly and me with relief from that particular clause
of our 1987 Consent Agreement that has since barred us from using
the dreaded three letters in ANY commercial context?
Looks like we may see yet another letter clarifying this last one...
if only to add the list of individuals and corporations SDTI wants
to explicitly prohibit from using their "trademark." Warning: that
list may look suspiciously like the list of entities who have
not licensed BSAFE.
-mjm
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Michael J. Markowitz, VP R&D Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Information Security Corporation Voice: 847-405-0500
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