Subject: IKE and Certicom "IP Rights"

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 19:23:40 -0500

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Housley <[email-masked]> writes:
    Russ> Dear IPsec Working Group:

    Russ> I just got this note, which is a follow-up to a query that I sent to 
    Russ> Certicom in July 2003.

  Thank you for posting this. But, this part makes no sense.

    Certicom> and other IETF standards using MODP Groups.  The applicable
    Certicom> patents include, but are not limited to, US Patents #5,933,504,
    Certicom> #6,563,928, #6,078,667, #6,178,507, #6,195,433, US Patent
    Certicom> Application Publications #2001/0014153, #2002/0090085, and PCT
    Certicom> Application #WO 00/01109, and corresponding foreign applications.

    Certicom> limited field of use of MODP public key cryptography
    Certicom> implemented using the well known Groups 1 and 2 as defined in
    Certicom> RFC 2409.  Certicom will send the IETF terms of the royalty
    Certicom> free license and will post this our web site shortly. 

  This is a silly offer. Certicom IPR people don't understand their own
patents and do not understand IKE, or cryptography at all it seems to
me. That he goes on to suggest that we use ECC instead, for which they have
even further patents is even more suspect. 

  I didn't look up all the patents, but the first one, 5,933,504, is about
how to generate and check the numbers. We discussed this last July in Vienna.
  This patent ought to apply to all IETF systems that use DH.

  No IKE implementations use the described mechanisms. IKE doesn't do that.
It does DH. To make DH interoperate we have to agree on a common base, "g",
which should have certain properties. Once the "g" has been generated and
checked, we are done. 
  So, from the IETF's point of view the only person/group that needs to
license this patent is the document editor! 
  
  The only other people that would need to license this would be who didn't
trust the document editor and/or the IETF. 

  Certicom "offer"s us MODP groups 1 and 2. Wow. Will they offer to license
PI to me next? they are NUMBERS. This is nonsense from them. 

] Collecting stories about my dad: http://www.sandelman.ca/cjr/ |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another Debian/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy");  [