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Anyone who "makes, uses, offers to sell or sells" a patented invention without the permission of the patent owner can be liable for patent infringement. The boundaries of the patent are defined in the claims portion of the patent. Accordingly, in order to determine whether a particular product, method or process infringes a patent, one must start with the text of the claims themselves. There are 40 claims in the RSA Patent, but only ten of them are independent claims. Independent claims are claims which do not incorporate other claims by reference. To infringe a dependent claim, one must first infringe the independent claim (or claims) incorporated by reference in the dependent claim. Conversely, if one does not infringe the independent claim(s) incorporated by the dependent claim, by definition one does not infringe the dependent claim. (source

Here's something on RSA and their patent: http://www.cyberlaw.com/rsa.html

That's the work this guy is famous for.

The RSA patent should never have been accepted, for many reasons (prior act, broad claims, plain mathematics, to name a few) , and i fail to understand your argument that the patent itself helped the industry.

You can read about the patent and its problems in this nice article in cyberlaw . I would like to add a few things though, regarding the industry reaction to the patent.

In '95 computers were already fast enough to handle secure-only communications, but the existence of this particular patent was a big problem for most of the new and small web companies (and users). And make no mistake, RSA really enforced this patent, they didn't play Mr. nice guy, if that is what you thought. So the majority of web sites, did not serve encrypted pages, the majority of emails are not encrypted (even today), and most of electronic devices have no such support.

To be fair, the patent did create a new market: a few companies selling "security" profited from this. RSA too. The industry as a whole didn't.

Internet naturally did not die from this patent (as the patent was not broad enough to cover non-secure communication as well) , but online security definetely took a major hit.

• 
  
• QuickTime case
  Apple sued a small San Francisco software developer that Apple asked to build a Windows version of QuickTime (the program that lets computer users run animation and digitized video on their PCs). Apple alleges that San Francisco Canyon Co. breached its agreement with Apple by working for Intel and producing a program, called DCI, that was incorporated into Microsoft's Video for Windows program. Apple has asked for an injunction, destruction of existing copies, and money damages. (San Jose Mercury News, December 10, 1994, 13D)
  
  
• Microsoft sued for alleged thef
  For months, executives at Microsoft Corp. and Burst.com Inc. discussed Burst's technology for transmitting movies and sounds over the Internet more quickly.
  The talks went nowhere, but Microsoft ultimately developed multimedia technology of its own, code-named Corona, prompting Burst to sue Microsoft on charges of theft and anticompetitive behavior.

yes

I have to suggest that a patent on a process is possibly sufficient.

The rsa patent was narrow strong enough to prevent interoperable software

RSA encryption and decryption are both essentially 3 line algorithms. There are no known alternate ways to decrypt -- assuming the absence of an academic conspiracy to suppress its existance -- and so the patents were legally strong enough to block any unlicensed interoperable software.

See this for further legal and practical explanation.

Ever hear of the RSA patent? If ever there was a software patent that was as close to being a mathematical formula I don't know what it would be. And that single "math" patent had major influences on suppressing innovation and computer security for decades. The world of cryptography is filled with supposedly unpatentable math formula patents.

There are other computer science fields that are also overly-burdended by patent minefields, such as text searching algorithms, compression algorithms, graphics compositing algorithms, and so forth. It's not just the GUIs, it's lots of stuff that actually looks and acts like math, and in many cases is actually represented by actual mathematical formulas! And yet they were patented.

I don't want to trust IBM in such situation. If IBM would donate all software patents it keeps to the public domain - then I'll trust as there will no legal way for them sue me or anyonelese after that. Before that they have all legal means to sue people, small businesses and competitors. The fact that they don't do it now doesn't prove that they won't do it tomorrow.

Remember kids, patents don't sue people, people sue people.

That right. But companies are not equal people. IBM is not a person. Existing IBM management has its decision. Time will change and so will management. Ans so will decisions about patent sueing.

But can you come up with something better that would be accepted in the real world?

Yes: NO SOFTWARE PATENTS. The real world (of United States) already lived a whole decade (1972-1981) without software patents:

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that an algorithm, which it defined as a "procedure for solving a given type of mathematical problem," was not a "process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter" within the meaning of section 101 of the Patent Act, and thus was not patentable subject matter. Six years later, the Court reaffirmed this rule, holding that even if the applicant wanted to limit the claim to use of the algorithm in a specific application, it was still not within the allowable subject matter of section 101.

In 1981, however, a breakthrough Supreme Court decision paved the way for patent claims containing algorithms. The case, Diamond v. Dehr, involved an improved process for making rubber. The improvement centered on an algorithm used to treat the rubber at specified temperatures. The Court held that when an algorithm is part of an otherwise patentable process (which manufacturing rubber certainly was), the presence of the algorithm among the other elements of the claim did not push the claim outside the bounds of section 101.

While the Supreme Court was deciding these cases, a trio of appellate court decisions refined the rules regarding when and how an algorithm may be incorporated into a patent. The three cases, In re Freeman, In re Walter, and In re Abele, establish what the Federal Circuit refers to as the Freeman-Walter-Abele test for patentability when an algorithm is implicated in a patent claim. The test is stated as follows:

It is first determined whether a mathematical algorithm is recited directly or indirectly in the claim. If so, it is next determined whether the claimed invention as a whole is no more than the algorithm itself; that is, whether the claim is directed to a mathematical algorithm that is not applied to or limited by physical elements or process steps. Such claims are nonstatutory. However, when the mathematical algorithm is applied in one or more steps of an otherwise statutory process claim, or one or more elements of an otherwise statutory apparatus claim, the requirements of section 101 are met.

vi VS emacs arguments are pointless and a waste of time.
vi is the best.

Well, that explains a lot too :)

Actually, according to this cyberlaw.com article, the RSA patent [not copyright] expired back in 2000. So the only issue regarding the GPL'ing of WASTE is whether Justin or AOL owns the code.

Judging from what happened, and from Justin's blog, it sounds like he thought he owned the code, but AOL asserted its rights. Perhaps he used WASTE as a test case, to see if the corporate AOL culture was compatable with his attitude.

That's just a theory, of course.

(Follow-up here.)

You can deposit any amount into a bank account, though you may have to file a small amoutn of paperwork declaring where it came from if it's over $10,000

Or, to rephrase what you said, you cannot deposit more than $10,000 without filing the proper forms. In fact, any "irregular" transaction will be reported to the authorities.

You are free to keep $10,000 in a cookie jar all you want.

This is legal, unless your house is searched and the money discovered. Then it may be seized based on new interpretations of old laws, and new anti-terrorist laws like the USA Patriot Act.

You can carry any amount of negotiable item into most countries, though you have to decolare it if it's over a certain amount. In the US, it's $10,000

The US treasury disagrees with you. Fail to file acceptable reasons, and the penalties can be quite severe.

You can deposit any amount into a bank account, though you may have to file a small amoutn of paperwork declaring where it came from if it's over $10,000

Or, to rephrase what you said, you cannot deposit more than $10,000 without filing the proper forms. In fact, any "irregular" transaction will be reported to the authorities.

You are free to keep $10,000 in a cookie jar all you want.

This is legal, unless your house is searched and the money discovered. Then it may be seized based on new interpretations of old laws, and new anti-terrorist laws like the USA Patriot Act.

You can carry any amount of negotiable item into most countries, though you have to decolare it if it's over a certain amount. In the US, it's $10,000

The US treasury disagrees with you. Fail to file acceptable reasons, and the penalties can be quite severe.

I have heard mention of Apple licensing technologies from XEROX, but I have never seen documentation. I don't think it happened because, According to Cyberlaw, when Apple sued MS the"Ninth Circuit recognized that "protection extends only to those components of a work that are original to the author, although original selection and arrangement of otherwise uncopyrightable components may be protectable." They "upheld the denial of protection to certain GUI items because of Apple's admitted heavy borrowing from iconic treatments in the Xerox Star and an IBM Pictureworld research report. The Ninth Circuit also found that even if certain folder and page icon designs were original to Apple, they "added so little to the mix of protectable material that the outcome could not reasonably be affected."

That said, I don't see how Apple "stole" anything from PARC. The two systems are pretty different.

Jef raskin been pushing GUIs at Apple for at least a couple of years at that point, and was already a couple of months into the Macintosh project. He had taken his Mac proposal straight to Mike Markula because the Steves had never been excited about his GUI work. In the late sixties at Carnegie Mellon (and long before Star/Alto), raskin did his PhD. thesis on object oriented graphic interface. He even called the system he described in his thesis "Quickdraw."

Steve Jobs got the idea for a new operating system from Jeff raskin and his Macintosh team who were busy developing one. Then he went to PARC to get a different perspective.

The Xerox trip was important to the evolution of the Mac in that it probably influenced some of Jobs decisions. In particular, the choice of a mouse as the pointer device, which raskin opposed. Raskin himself was pretty familiar with PARC's work. He had spent a fair amount of time there before coming to Apple and was friends with several PARC people. IIRC, there was a substantial gap between the PARC visit and Jobs' Mac coup, time he spent working on Lisa.

For the most part, the PARC story is just a Jobs authored mythology designed to paint himself as the spiritual father of the Mac. As with many such breakthroughs, the Mac was an appropriate implementation of technologies and design concepts which had been developing simultaneously in several places.

My guess is the licensing story is an embelishment of the truth that Apple had XEROX's corporate level permission to tour PARC sans NDA.

Neither HTML nor RSA were invented within the last 10 years, and spreadsheet software has been around for well over 20 years. This page discusses the history of HTML, this page covers the RSA algorithm, and this page does the same for spreadsheet software.

They successfully sued people in court (Schlafly), and settled where it looked plausible that litigation would have invalidated the patent (Cylink).

upon analysis it will seem pretty clear that that harm was the result not so much of the patent itself, but rather of the misinterpretation of the meaning of the patent by one party or another.

And yes, SSL was available; in Web browsers and Web servers manufactured by 2 deep-pocketed companies, and a few smaller companies selling binary only Apache-based servers.

So, you could use SSL for web browsing if you wanted to use one of only two browser implementations, and for Web serving only if you had $$$. RSARDI refused to license the *use* of the patent without licensing their expensive implementation (it was never clear to me in discussions with them and/or 3rd parties whether you could use some other implementation if you paid the $$$ for theirs), so using SSL for any purpose other than web browsing or serving in a commercial setting for a small company was virutally impossible -- legally, anyway.

So, I think my claim that the patent prevented innovation is reasonably sound and that the fault was due to the patent system which included the patent and its prevailing interpretation, correct or not.

Only slightly on topic but (IMHO) interesting anyway, a long-ago thread on openssl-users about RSADSI's indimidation, licensing, standards manipulation and other nasty practices including: this, this, this and this is available for you reading pleasure at this site.

Okay. Let's talk about RSA. Although since you don't seem to draw any impacts from the RSA patent, I have to just guess at your meaning.

First of all, RSA was used as a key component in SSL. Everyone who banks or makes purchases using the Internet has access to SSL. To say that the patent on RSA hindered the adoption of SSL-- which you didn't, but I can only guess you meant by "the result of all of which certainly included the lack of security in software for any but the deep-pocketed"-- seems unlikely at best.

Furthermore, in 1997, Flinn and Jordan of Alston & Bird LLP published an article entitled, "Using the RSA Algorithm for Encryption and Digital Signatures: Can You Encrypt, Decrypt, Sign and Verify without Infringing the RSA Patent?" Read it here.

In this article the authors say, in part, "The existence of the patent, and RSA Data's aggressive litigation posture, have chilled the interest in both commercial and non-commercial implementations of public key encryption and digital signature technologies." This would seem to be evidence for your assertion. But read on: "Many have taken for granted the bald assertion that the 'RSA Algorithm is patented,' without examining the patent itself, or more particularly, the claims of the patent." In a footnote to this statement, the authors cite Schneier's Applied Cryptography as an example of one misinterpretation of the patent.

This article goes on-- at great length, not worth reproducing here-- to explain why the process of verifying an RSA-generated signature is not covered by the patent. Furthermore, the process of generating an RSA signature is also not covered by the patent, due to the existence of the identical Pohlig-Hellman algorithm invented in 1975, two years before RSA. Basically, the only thing that the patent covers is the process for generating RSA key pairs.

So basically, if you look at it closely, as those two patent attorneys did, you'll find that the RSA patent wasn't nearly as wide in scope as most people seemed to assume it was.

Maybe you can make the case that some kind of harm, direct or indirect, was done as a result of the RSA patent. But upon analysis it will seem pretty clear that that harm was the result not so much of the patent itself, but rather of the misinterpretation of the meaning of the patent by one party or another.

--xPhase

In 3 lawsuits the existence of the Pohlig-Hellman algorithm was missed. To be sure, there is a good case against their patent. But the fact remains that the connection was not necessarily obvious.

In fact comments by the authors of the Pohlig-Hellman algorithm suggest that it was not. Go here and scroll down to "Martin Hellman". They were actively looking for a good public-key algorithm. They did not find it. They were experts who knew the field, clearly knew their own algorithm, were looking for something like RSA, but did not succeed in finding it. That alone qualifies as extremely good evidence that the idea was non-obvious at the time, no matter how obvious it appears in retrospect.

Simplicity of an idea has nothing to do with how patentable it is!

As for the fact that it is math, check the qualification I gave. If you consider anything in math or computers (by which I meant software) patentable, then RSA clearly should qualify. Whether or not an algorithm should be patentable is another - far more questionable - issue.

Cheers,
Ben

PS There was one thing that I was wrong on. The first public key algorithm predated RSA. However RSA is the first publically available public key algorithm that still stands. Here are some details. But the spooks apparently had it well before that.

Btw, along the topic of math that has been around for "years and years," LZW doesn't become available in the US until Dec 2002. For those that haven't been following the LZW issues, UniSys holds the patent to LZW and silently watched CompuServe declair LZW part of the GIF87, GIF89 and GIF89a open standards. They also waited silently for LZW to become widely used as part of the PostScript standard. After YEARS of neglecting to enforce the patent they decided to then enforce payment requirements to use the GIF, TIFF/LZW, PostScript (and PDF) standards. Their targets have included GNU software contributor Derek B. Noonburg for xpdf and Linux friendly company Corel Corp.