Subject: Re: OpenSSL import
To: Michael C. Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>
From: Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com>
List: tech-security
Date: 06/29/1999 19:17:34
On Tue, Jun 29, 1999 at 06:22:51PM -0400, Michael C. Richardson wrote:
> 
>   In particular, many of the things that are patented in the USA are not
> outside of the USA, and it is specifically the people outside of the USA
> that currently are most desirous of having cryptosrc-intl. 
> 

I'm glad to hear it.  This was hardly unnoticed in the debate.

Current patents covering the IDEA algorithm (quoth ep.dips.org):

	EP0482154	(all European Patent Office nations)
	US5214703	(United States of America)
	JP5500121T	(Japan)
	HK1003338	(? -- Hong Kong?)
	WO9118459	(Patent Cooperation Treaty)

Note that in addition to the EPO patent, which covers most nations in Europe,
the PCT patent essentially allows Ascom to have a patent issued in any 
industrialized nation for the cost of filing fees.

Will you please stop pretending this is a U.S. againt the world debate?  It's
basically not okay to make commercial use of IDEA *anywhere*, and Ascom
has an extremely narrow definition of "noncommercial use", at least in
their standard license.

You should not have imported IDEA into the tree.  Regardless of how any of
us feel about patents on encryption algorithms, "software patents", or
any other aspect of intellectual property law, NetBSD is not a vehicle for
trampling widely recognized intellectual property rights.

Thor