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0950f9c5 WJ |
1 | From: James A. Woods <jaw@eos.arc.nasa.gov> |
2 | ||
3 | >From vn Fri Dec 2 18:05:27 1988 | |
4 | Subject: Re: Looking for C source for RSA | |
5 | Newsgroups: sci.crypt | |
6 | ||
7 | # Illegitimi noncarborundum | |
8 | ||
9 | Patents are a tar pit. | |
10 | ||
11 | A good case can be made that most are just a license to sue, and nothing | |
12 | is illegal until a patent is upheld in court. | |
13 | ||
14 | For example, if you receive netnews by means other than 'nntp', | |
15 | these very words are being modulated by 'compress', | |
16 | a variation on the patented Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm. | |
17 | ||
18 | Original Ziv-Lempel is patent number 4,464,650, and the more powerful | |
19 | LZW method is #4,558,302. Yet despite any similarities between 'compress' | |
20 | and LZW (the public-domain 'compress' code was designed and given to the | |
21 | world before the ink on the Welch patent was dry), no attorneys from Sperry | |
22 | (the assignee) have asked you to unplug your Usenet connection. | |
23 | ||
24 | Why? I can't speak for them, but it is possible the claims are too broad, | |
25 | or, just as bad, not broad enough. ('compress' does things not mentioned | |
26 | in the Welch patent.) Maybe they realize that they can commercialize | |
27 | LZW better by selling hardware implementations rather than by licensing | |
28 | software. Again, the LZW software delineated in the patent is *not* | |
29 | the same as that of 'compress'. | |
30 | ||
31 | At any rate, court-tested software patents are a different animal; | |
32 | corporate patents in a portfolio are usually traded like baseball cards | |
33 | to shut out small fry rather than actually be defended before | |
34 | non-technical juries. Perhaps RSA will undergo this test successfully, | |
35 | although the grant to "exclude others from making, using, or selling" | |
36 | the invention would then only apply to the U.S. (witness the | |
37 | Genentech patent of the TPA molecule in the U.S. but struck down | |
38 | in Great Britain as too broad.) | |
39 | ||
40 | The concept is still exotic for those who learned in school the rule of thumb | |
41 | that one may patent "apparatus" but not an "idea". | |
42 | Apparently this all changed in Diamond v. Diehr (1981) when the U. S. Supreme | |
43 | Court reversed itself. | |
44 | ||
45 | Scholars should consult the excellent article in the Washington and Lee | |
46 | Law Review (fall 1984, vol. 41, no. 4) by Anthony and Colwell for a | |
47 | comprehensive survey of an area which will remain murky for some time. | |
48 | ||
49 | Until the dust clears, how you approach ideas which are patented depends | |
50 | on how paranoid you are of a legal onslaught. Arbitrary? Yes. But | |
51 | the patent bar the the CCPA (Court of Customs and Patent Appeals) | |
52 | thanks you for any uncertainty as they, at least, stand to gain | |
53 | from any trouble. | |
54 | ||
55 | =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
56 | From: James A. Woods <jaw@eos.arc.nasa.gov> | |
57 | Subject: Re: Looking for C source for RSA (actually 'compress' patents) | |
58 | ||
59 | In article <2042@eos.UUCP> you write: | |
60 | >The concept is still exotic for those who learned in school the rule of thumb | |
61 | >that one may patent "apparatus" but not an "idea". | |
62 | ||
63 | A rule of thumb that has never been completely valid, as any chemical | |
64 | engineer can tell you. (Chemical processes were among the earliest patents, | |
65 | as I recall.) | |
66 | ||
67 | ah yes -- i date myself when relaying out-of-date advice from elderly | |
68 | attorneys who don't even specialize in patents. one other interesting | |
69 | class of patents include the output of optical lens design programs, | |
70 | which yield formulae which can then fairly directly can be molded | |
71 | into glass. although there are restrictions on patenting equations, | |
72 | the "embedded systems" seem to fly past the legal gauntlets. | |
73 | ||
74 | anyway, i'm still learning about intellectual property law after | |
75 | several conversations from a unisys (nee sperry) lawyer re 'compress'. | |
76 | ||
77 | it's more complicated than this, but they're letting (oral | |
78 | communication only) software versions of 'compress' slide | |
79 | as far as licensing fees go. this includes 'arc', 'stuffit', | |
80 | and other commercial wrappers for 'compress'. yet they are | |
81 | signing up licensees for hardware chips. hewlett-packard | |
82 | supposedly has an active vlsi project, and unisys has | |
83 | board-level lzw-based tape controllers. (to build lzw into | |
84 | a disk controller would be strange, as you'd have to build | |
85 | in a filesystem too!) | |
86 | ||
87 | it's byzantine | |
88 | that unisys is in a tiff with hp regarding the patents, | |
89 | after discovering some sort of "compress" button on some | |
90 | hp terminal product. why? well, professor abraham lempel jumped | |
91 | from being department chairman of computer science at technion in | |
92 | israel to sperry (where he got the first patent), but then to work | |
93 | at hewlett-packard on sabbatical. the second welch patent | |
94 | is only weakly derivative of the first, so they want chip | |
95 | licenses and hp relented. however, everyone agrees something | |
96 | like the current unix implementation is the way to go with | |
97 | software, so hp (and ucb) long ago asked spencer thomas and i to sign | |
98 | off on copyright permission (although they didn't need to, it being pd). | |
99 | lempel, hp, and unisys grumbles they can't make money off the | |
100 | software since a good free implementation (not the best -- | |
101 | i have more ideas!) escaped via usenet. (lempel's own pascal | |
102 | code was apparently horribly slow.) | |
103 | i don't follow the ibm 'arc' legal bickering; my impression | |
104 | is that the pc folks are making money off the archiver/wrapper | |
105 | look/feel of the thing [if ms-dos can be said to have a look and feel]. | |
106 | ||
107 | now where is telebit with the compress firmware? in a limbo | |
108 | netherworld, probably, with sperry still welcoming outfits | |
109 | to sign patent licenses, a common tactic to bring other small fry | |
110 | into the fold. the guy who crammed 12-bit compess into the modem | |
111 | there left. also what is transpiring with 'compress' and sys 5 rel 4? | |
112 | beats me, but if sperry got a hold of them on these issues, | |
113 | at&t would likely re-implement another algorithm if they | |
114 | thought 'compress' infringes. needful to say, i don't think | |
115 | it does after the abovementioned legal conversation. | |
116 | my own beliefs on whether algorithms should be patentable at all | |
117 | change with the weather. if the courts finally nail down | |
118 | patent protection for algorithms, academic publication in | |
119 | textbooks will be somewhat at odds with the engineering world, | |
120 | where the textbook codes will simply be a big tease to get | |
121 | money into the patent holder coffers... | |
122 | ||
123 | oh, if you implement lzw from the patent, you won't get | |
124 | good rates because it doesn't mention adaptive table reset, | |
125 | lack thereof being *the* serious deficiency of thomas' first version. | |
126 | ||
127 | now i know that patent law generally protects against independent | |
128 | re-invention (like the 'xor' hash function pleasantly mentioned | |
129 | in the patent [but not the paper]). | |
130 | but the upshot is that if anyone ever wanted to sue us, | |
131 | we're partially covered with | |
132 | independently-developed twists, plus the fact that some of us work | |
133 | in a bureacratic morass (as contractor to a public agency in my case). | |
134 | ||
135 | quite a mess, huh? i've wanted to tell someone this stuff | |
136 | for a long time, for posterity if nothing else. | |
137 | ||
138 | james | |
139 |