Re: Encryption--RSA v. PGP

[Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>]

Kevin Connolly <kconnolly@EVW.COM> writes on cyberia-l forwarded to cpunks:
> RSA Data Security, Inc. filed an action in the Superior Court of California,
> San Mateo County, against Pretty Good Privacy, Inc.  PGP has been
> claiming that its license to distribute RSA-based encryption software is
> based on a chain running from Public Key Partners to Viacrypt, Inc.  PGP
> acquired Viacrypt, Inc. in January 1996 and has been selling RSA-based
> encryption software for commercial use ever since.  The complaint, filed
> by Tomlinson Zisko Morosoli & Maser, alleges that PGP's license is
> derived from a license to Lemcom, which in turn has been terminated.
> 
> This might well mean the end of PGP.  

I don't think so.

PGP has been standardising on El Gamal which is not covered by RSA's
patents, for precisely the reason that RSA Inc has a bad record as a
litigious patent worker.  El Gamal is a variant of Diffie-Hellman, and
the patents on Diffie-Hellman are set to expire RSN (later this year,
Sept?)

There is still the putative claim by RSA that they have a blanket
patent covering `any public key system', but it sounds like they are
not relying on this claim here.

I think that the initial PGP products are using RSA, however I
understood PGP is moving to El Gamal, where RSA is due to be relegated
to a `for backwards compatibility only' feature.  This suit will maybe
accelerate this move away from RSA, and perhaps costs backwards
compatibility.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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