To answer the question that I think you're asking;
No, the MIT patent on the RSA public key cryptosystem has not been put
in the public domain. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that
the protocol which results from IETF involvement in S/MIME will make any
use of RSA.
Hope this is helpful.
Cheers,
Steve Dusse
CTO
RSA
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From: Graham Klyne[SMTP:GK(_at_)ACM(_dot_)ORG]
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 1997 9:40 AM
To: Steve Dusse; 'ietf-smime(_at_)imc(_dot_)org'
Subject: Re: RSA letter to ISOC
I'm not an IPR expert, so please excuse me if this is a dumb question:
At 11:33 AM 9/26/97 -0700, Steve Dusse wrote:
[...] to the extent
RSA has any copyright interest or claim on the S/MIME specification [...]
resulting from contributing authorship or otherwise, RSA hereby
relinquishes
and disclaims any such interest or claim thereto and contributes them to
the
public domain.
My question:
Does this mean that that RSADSI's patent control over the RSA *algorithm*
is being relinquished?
GK.
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