> From: Bill Appelbe [mailto:b_appelbe at vistech.ie]
> People seem to get very upset at these algorithms getting
> patents, I think that in some cases they are deserved
> (though maybe with a shorter lifespan) and RSA is one of those
> cases, it took a lot to come up with that algorithm and they
> should be rewarded.
Effectively having a seventeen-year strangle-hold on the US public-key
cryptography market is a wildly excessive reward for inventing an algorithm.
Interestingly, MIT owns the patent, not RSA Security Inc. RSA Security Inc.
was granted an exclusive license by MIT for the patent. This suggests to me
that the development of the RSA algorithm was conducted as part of academic
research. Isn't the purpose of academic research to further human knowledge
rather than to make a quick buck?
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