In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "James A. Donald" writes: > -- >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. >
We have been told. I downloaded Certicom's 2005 annual report (http://www.certicom.com/download/aid-503/Certicom2005AR.pdf). On p. 11, it says For the year ended April 30, 2004, revenue from IP totalled $25-million represented by a licensing contract for our Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) technology by the NSA, --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
