The point I was making here is that we do not need CertiCom to do ECC. Certicom have a number of patents relating to ECC, the earliest of which was filed in 1997. Practical means of performing ECC were published in 1985.
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott Kitterman > Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 12:59 PM > To: ietf-dkim@mipassoc.org > Subject: Re: [ietf-dkim] agenda item on upgrading hash algorithms? > > On 02/23/2006 12:16, Douglas Otis wrote: > > On Feb 22, 2006, at 7:52 PM, Douglas Otis wrote: > > > On Feb 22, 2006, at 6:47 PM, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote: > > >> In rebuttal to Doug's point about not depending on the DNS > > >> supporting longer key sizes, an ECDSA key that gives equivalent > > >> strength to a 128 bit symmetric cipher is 256 bits with point > > >> compression and 512 bits without. An equivalent ECDSA > signature is > > >> 512 bits in either case. The comparable key size for RSA is 3072 > > >> bits for key and signature. > > > > > > This looks great, but at what price? From what other companies > > > beyond Certicom Inc. would licenses need to be obtained > in order to > > > support the EC algorithm? Is there any information with > respect to > > > existing terms? > > > > As a follow-on: > > > > Certicom may grant royalty free licenses in some cases. > > > > http://www.certicom.com/download/aid-545/IETF.pdf > > > > http://www1.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/IETF-2006Jan26-Certicom-IPR.pdf > > > > http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/certicom-ipr-rfc3526-rfc2409-ikev2.txt > > > > http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/CERTICOM-SMIME > > http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/certicom_smime_license.pdf > > > > http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/CERTICOM-IPSEC-ECC > > > > http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/CERTICOM-ECDSA > > > One of the points that DKIM currently has in its favor is > that it can be implemented in all major MTAs without > conflicting with the existing licensing of those programs > (both proprietary and open, including GPL). > > I think that if DKIM were to be dependent on crypto > technology with more restrictive licensing terms, it would > represent a substantial impediment to adoption. IANAL, so I > have no idea if the representations above would present a > problem or not, but I do think that we should understand the > impacts of these patents on the ability of DKIM to be > implemented everywhere before we proceed to far towards a > solution with additional licensing considerations. > > Scott K > _______________________________________________ > NOTE WELL: This list operates according to > http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html > > _______________________________________________ NOTE WELL: This list operates according to http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html
