Re: Quick ping about Surety Technologies

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

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Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 00:17:17 -0500 (EST)
From: <Somebody>
To: rah@shipwright.com
Subject: Re: Quick ping about Surety Technologies

> *That*'s interesting. Haven't heard it before. If you want, I'll bounce it
> around.

If you would, that would be interesting.  The patent info on their web
site includes:

	Method for secure timestamping of digital documents.
	U.S. Patent No. 5,136,647, issued August 4, 1992.
	U.S. Patent Re. 34,954, reissued May 30, 1995.

	The initial patent issue covers a variety of fundamental
	technology and algorithmic components of digital
	timestamping. More specifically, the claims cover:

	* Any use of an outside party's digital signature to timestamp
	  a document.
	* The "hash-and-sign" method in which the outside party receives
	  the one-way hash of the document to be timestamped.

I distrust software patents, but even that aside, these sound really
broad to me.  More info at <http://www.surety.com/patent_overview.html>.

<snip>

<Somebody's .sig>
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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'