Re: more info from talk at MIT yesterday.

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>]

Bill Sommerfeld says:
> They also confirmed Tom Knight's suspicions about what they're going
> to do when someone reverse engineers the chip and publishes the
> Skipjack algorithm & the family key: they've got a patent application
> filed, under a secrecy order; if the algorithm is published, they'll
> lift the secrecy order and have the patent issued, and use that to go
> after anyone making a compatible version.

Since when can the government patent its work? I thought that works
produced by government agencies could not be copyrighted or patented.

In any case, they cannot refuse to license a patent, so this isn't
real protection anyway. (The hope behind people patenting things they
may release in the future is to make it commercially less attractive,
not to utterly prevent use.)

Perry