James A. Donald wrote: > -- > Whyte, William: > >>It hints that only some particular curves have been >>licensed. It could be that NSA has decided not to buy >>a license for the other curves, or it could be that >>operations on those curves aren't patented. The >>presentation doesn't give enough information to >>establish which. > > > If the NSA paid anything significant for any of the > curves, we would be told. Therefore the NSA paid > nothing or almost nothing, and therefore if the NSA > licensed anything, it would have licensed everything. > > I doubt that the NSA paid any money whatsoever for this > license, making it profoundly unimpressive as evidence > that *any* curves have a plausible valid patent. If the > NSA paid real money, the patent holders would be > sticking it in our face as a price setting precedent.
I had a recent discussion with a person in a government agency that indicated we would not be able to use them as a reference and that they would probably want an unlimited license - because there could be no reference to a number of users within the agency. They did say that they would get GSA pricing. I suspect that Certicom got GSA pricing for the deal as is, I assume, required by law. Nick -- Nick Owen WiKID Systems, Inc. 404.962.8983 (desk) 404.542.9453 (cell) http://www.wikidsystems.com https://sourceforge.net/projects/wikid-twofactor/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
