> > I wonder whether this was research to see how hard it > was to get the PTO to grant an absurd patent. >
Get Simson's opinion, please. It is not insane to patent something so that you can control its use and to do so for reasons other than wanting to lay about in the Caribbean/Vegas. As to prior art, consider "A Revocable Backup System," by Boneh and Lipton, 6th USENIX Security Symposium, presented 25 July 1996. (see [1] below) BTW, I can personally attest that the USPTO makes both Type I (false positive) errors (in granting patents that should not be classified as useful and unobvious) *and* Type II (false negative) errors (when confronted with something sufficiently unobvious that they find it impossible to understand that it is either unobvious or useful much less both). --dan [1] http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/sec96/boneh.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]