> http://www.cyberlaw.com/rsa.html

        Know that one. The author, Patrick Flinn, was the attorney for Cylink (and
Stanford University, I think) in the long RSA/Cylink litigation over the
viability of the RSApkc patent.

        In some corners of the industry, Mr. Flinn is remembered as the fellow who
unsuccessfully argued that the so-called Stanford patents gave Cylink (as
the Stanford licensee) a total lock on any and all public key cryptosystems.

        There was, I think, a brief retort to that Cyberlaw article in a letter to
the editor from the lead RSA attorney.

        When the article first came out, there was another discussion of Flinn's
pitch among the IP lawyers and law profs on the Cyberia mailing list. Their
consensus, as I recall, was that he had made a potent presentation for a
promising young attorney, but that his legal foundation was awkwardly
creative, incomplete, and unconvincing.  Check the Cyberia archives for the
critiques.  They were, I thought, pretty patronizing.

        The RSA guys, for whom I have been a consultant for many years, got a
bitter laugh out of it.  They said, basically, that Flinn had tried out the
same arguments, several times, before judges, magistrates, and arbitators...
and had been rebuffed or trounced each time.

        The bottom line is that Patrick Flinn, Esq., could not convince his client,
Cylink -- nor any other potential challenger to the RSApkc patent -- that
his arguments would survive a trial, much less prevail.  Cylink reviewed the
case Mr. Flinn had spent several years researching, developing, and
polishing, then decided to fire Mr. Flinn, settle with RSA, and purchase a
RSApkc license from RSA.

        No matter how exhilarating it may be to dream of yourself pulling down the
RSApkc license in its final months, ya gotta wonder why this gangbuster
version of Mr. Flinn's case was presented in the pages of a magazine, rather
than in a US
Federal courtroom? In a magazine article, of course, Flinn was able to
escape both RSA response and the judge's ruling.

        Suerte,
                _Vin


-----Original Message-----

Brian Snyder wrote:

>Hi all.  Alot of talk has gone back and forth about RSA patent
>issues. Daniel van der Zee pointed this site out to me in some
>private email (thanx), and I was curious how experienced poeple
> here interpret it.

> http://www.cyberlaw.com/rsa.html

<snip>

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