I just got this message from NIST's Edward Roback. There seems to be a possibility that the AES contest could be endangered by claims of intellectual property rights on competing algorithms. Unfortunately some of the stronger candidates seem to be the less enlightened ones in this matter. It is a pity that NIST did not ask for a clear statement to that effect before accepting the candidates. I suppose there is still time to apply some pressure before announcing the algorithms that will make it to the second round. Date: Thu, 04 Mar 1999 16:09:23 -0500 To: <long list> From: Edward Roback Subject: draft Int. property slides AES Submitters, You may recall that last year we posed a question to you (on an infomral, non-binding basis) regarding intellectual property. There has been interest in providing a summary of what we found at the upcoming AES #2 conference on March 22-23 during NIST's briefings to the conference. I wanted to give each of you a chance to see our draft summary and characterization of your responses. Feel free to send me any comments you may have. Thanks! Ed Roback, NIST draft slide 1: Intellectual Property (IP) Questions have been raised with NIST regarding the possibility that submitters may claim that their IP is infringed by the practice of another candidate algorithm. So, in the spirit of trying to obtain a worldwide royalty-free algorithm, NIST posed the following question to the 15 submitters (for informal, non-binding response): Are you willing to waive any IP rights you may have on any party who makes, uses, or sells implementations of the selected AES algorithm(s) (no matter which algorithm is selected) ? draft slide 2: Summary of Responses Unqualified Yes: CAST-256, Crypton, DEAL, Frog, LOKI97, Rijndael, Serpent, Twofish Yes, clarified: Safer+ Yes, if: HPC Not quite Yes: E2, MARS, No: RC6 Can’t say: DFC No response: Magenta ---------------- Original text ends here ---------------- Dianelos Georgoudis email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.tecapro.com