Return to NOTES CVS log

Up to [CSRG BSD Unix] / 43BSDReno / usr.bin / compress

Annotation of 43BSDReno/usr.bin/compress/NOTES, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: From: James A. Woods <[email protected]>
        !             2: 
        !             3: >From vn Fri Dec  2 18:05:27 1988
        !             4: Subject: Re: Looking for C source for RSA
        !             5: Newsgroups: sci.crypt
        !             6: 
        !             7: # Illegitimi noncarborundum
        !             8: 
        !             9: Patents are a tar pit.
        !            10: 
        !            11: A good case can be made that most are just a license to sue, and nothing
        !            12: is illegal until a patent is upheld in court.
        !            13: 
        !            14: For example, if you receive netnews by means other than 'nntp',
        !            15: these very words are being modulated by 'compress',
        !            16: a variation on the patented Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm.
        !            17: 
        !            18: Original Ziv-Lempel is patent number 4,464,650, and the more powerful
        !            19: LZW method is #4,558,302.  Yet despite any similarities between 'compress'
        !            20: and LZW (the public-domain 'compress' code was designed and given to the
        !            21: world before the ink on the Welch patent was dry), no attorneys from Sperry
        !            22: (the assignee) have asked you to unplug your Usenet connection.
        !            23: 
        !            24: Why?  I can't speak for them, but it is possible the claims are too broad,
        !            25: or, just as bad, not broad enough.  ('compress' does things not mentioned
        !            26: in the Welch patent.)  Maybe they realize that they can commercialize
        !            27: LZW better by selling hardware implementations rather than by licensing
        !            28: software.  Again, the LZW software delineated in the patent is *not*
        !            29: the same as that of 'compress'.
        !            30: 
        !            31: At any rate, court-tested software patents are a different animal;
        !            32: corporate patents in a portfolio are usually traded like baseball cards
        !            33: to shut out small fry rather than actually be defended before
        !            34: non-technical juries.  Perhaps RSA will undergo this test successfully,
        !            35: although the grant to "exclude others from making, using, or selling"
        !            36: the invention would then only apply to the U.S. (witness the 
        !            37: Genentech patent of the TPA molecule in the U.S. but struck down
        !            38: in Great Britain as too broad.)
        !            39: 
        !            40: The concept is still exotic for those who learned in school the rule of thumb
        !            41: that one may patent "apparatus" but not an "idea".
        !            42: Apparently this all changed in Diamond v. Diehr (1981) when the U. S. Supreme
        !            43: Court reversed itself.  
        !            44: 
        !            45: Scholars should consult the excellent article in the Washington and Lee
        !            46: Law Review (fall 1984, vol. 41, no. 4) by Anthony and Colwell for a
        !            47: comprehensive survey of an area which will remain murky for some time.
        !            48: 
        !            49: Until the dust clears, how you approach ideas which are patented depends
        !            50: on how paranoid you are of a legal onslaught.  Arbitrary?  Yes.  But
        !            51: the patent bar the the CCPA (Court of Customs and Patent Appeals)
        !            52: thanks you for any uncertainty as they, at least, stand to gain
        !            53: from any trouble.
        !            54: 
        !            55: =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
        !            56: From: James A. Woods <[email protected]>
        !            57: Subject: Re: Looking for C source for RSA (actually 'compress' patents)
        !            58: 
        !            59:        In article <[email protected]> you write:
        !            60:        >The concept is still exotic for those who learned in school the rule of thumb
        !            61:        >that one may patent "apparatus" but not an "idea".
        !            62: 
        !            63: A rule of thumb that has never been completely valid, as any chemical
        !            64: engineer can tell you.  (Chemical processes were among the earliest patents,
        !            65: as I recall.)
        !            66: 
        !            67:        ah yes -- i date myself when relaying out-of-date advice from elderly
        !            68:        attorneys who don't even specialize in patents.  one other interesting
        !            69:        class of patents include the output of optical lens design programs,
        !            70:        which yield formulae which can then fairly directly can be molded
        !            71:        into glass.  although there are restrictions on patenting equations,
        !            72:        the "embedded systems" seem to fly past the legal gauntlets.
        !            73: 
        !            74:        anyway, i'm still learning about intellectual property law after
        !            75:        several conversations from a unisys (nee sperry) lawyer re 'compress'.
        !            76: 
        !            77:        it's more complicated than this, but they're letting (oral
        !            78:        communication only) software versions of 'compress' slide
        !            79:        as far as licensing fees go.  this includes 'arc', 'stuffit',
        !            80:        and other commercial wrappers for 'compress'.  yet they are
        !            81:        signing up licensees for hardware chips.  hewlett-packard
        !            82:        supposedly has an active vlsi project, and unisys has
        !            83:        board-level lzw-based tape controllers.  (to build lzw into
        !            84:        a disk controller would be strange, as you'd have to build
        !            85:        in a filesystem too!)
        !            86: 
        !            87:        it's byzantine
        !            88:        that unisys is in a tiff with hp regarding the patents,
        !            89:        after discovering some sort of "compress" button on some
        !            90:        hp terminal product.  why?  well, professor abraham lempel jumped
        !            91:        from being department chairman of computer science at technion in
        !            92:        israel to sperry (where he got the first patent), but then to work
        !            93:        at hewlett-packard on sabbatical.  the second welch patent
        !            94:        is only weakly derivative of the first, so they want chip
        !            95:        licenses and hp relented.  however, everyone agrees something
        !            96:        like the current unix implementation is the way to go with
        !            97:        software, so hp (and ucb) long ago asked spencer thomas and i to sign
        !            98:        off on copyright permission (although they didn't need to, it being pd).
        !            99:        lempel, hp, and unisys grumbles they can't make money off the
        !           100:        software since a good free implementation (not the best --
        !           101:        i have more ideas!) escaped via usenet.  (lempel's own pascal
        !           102:        code was apparently horribly slow.)
        !           103:        i don't follow the ibm 'arc' legal bickering; my impression
        !           104:        is that the pc folks are making money off the archiver/wrapper
        !           105:        look/feel of the thing [if ms-dos can be said to have a look and feel]. 
        !           106: 
        !           107:        now where is telebit with the compress firmware?  in a limbo
        !           108:        netherworld, probably, with sperry still welcoming outfits
        !           109:        to sign patent licenses, a common tactic to bring other small fry
        !           110:        into the fold.  the guy who crammed 12-bit compess into the modem
        !           111:        there left.  also what is transpiring with 'compress' and sys 5 rel 4?
        !           112:        beats me, but if sperry got a hold of them on these issues,
        !           113:        at&t would likely re-implement another algorithm if they
        !           114:        thought 'compress' infringes.  needful to say, i don't think
        !           115:        it does after the abovementioned legal conversation.
        !           116:        my own beliefs on whether algorithms should be patentable at all
        !           117:        change with the weather.  if the courts finally nail down
        !           118:        patent protection for algorithms, academic publication in
        !           119:        textbooks will be somewhat at odds with the engineering world,
        !           120:        where the textbook codes will simply be a big tease to get
        !           121:        money into the patent holder coffers...
        !           122: 
        !           123:        oh, if you implement lzw from the patent, you won't get
        !           124:        good rates because it doesn't mention adaptive table reset,
        !           125:        lack thereof being *the* serious deficiency of thomas' first version.
        !           126: 
        !           127:        now i know that patent law generally protects against independent
        !           128:        re-invention (like the 'xor' hash function pleasantly mentioned
        !           129:        in the patent [but not the paper]).
        !           130:        but the upshot is that if anyone ever wanted to sue us,
        !           131:        we're partially covered with
        !           132:        independently-developed twists, plus the fact that some of us work
        !           133:        in a bureacratic morass (as contractor to a public agency in my case).
        !           134: 
        !           135:        quite a mess, huh?  i've wanted to tell someone this stuff
        !           136:        for a long time, for posterity if nothing else.
        !           137: 
        !           138: james 
        !           139: 

This archive runs on limited infrastructure. Preserving old code on modern bandwidth. Automated agents are requested to crawl responsibly.