At 11:34 AM 7/31/03 -0700, Tim May wrote: >Some people expected a "land rush" when the main RSA patents expired >several years ago. Parties were even thrown. The land rush never >happened.
Wrong. RSA algorithm is used freely now in US designs, knowing it is no longer patented. I didn't go to any party, but I flipped a bit in my cranial store indicating that it could be used freely. And this is/was critical, because whereas a block cipher (eg IDEA) can be replaced, RSA can't in some apps. As someone currently rolling his own RSA by setting up the bignums in C, it is a relief to be free of patent issues. I don't believe this would have been the case before the expiry. (This is for embedded devices, I'm not reinventing a protocol wheel.) I'll predict a similarly invisible "land rush" when ECC patents run out, assuming that its patented and also considered useful when the supposed patents expire.