RE: Remove SHOULD for elliptic curve groups in IKEv2

[Chris Trobridge <CTrobridge@baltimore.com>]

Certicom have been very active in this area.

They have a document stating their patents/applications:

http://www.secg.org/collateral/certicom_secg_patent.pdf

This is better than what they used to say which was along the lines of "we
have patents in this area that you might infringe but if you buy a licence
from us you'll be ok".

Their earliest patent listed above was in 1988 and covers multiplication
using base-normal form.  There are other patents (by others) covering
multiplication with normal basis representation.

I did a (general) patent search on "Elliptic Curve" and "Cryptography" and
that came up with 114 patents in the last 6 years.  Quite apart from various
acceleration patents, a number of signature methods are also covered.

Again, I am not experienced in interpreting patents either.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Richardson [mailto:mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca]
Sent: 12 March 2002 20:16
To: ipsec@lists.tislabs.com
Cc: Mark.Winstead@NetOctave.com; Paul Koning
Subject: Re: Remove SHOULD for elliptic curve groups in IKEv2 



>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Koning <pkoning@equallogic.com> writes:
    Paul> One data point:

    Paul> Even before AES was nailed down, there were chip vendors
announcing
    Paul> hardware acceleration support for AES.

    Paul> On the other hand, years after EC came out, hardware accelerator
    Paul> support for it is still somewhere between very rare and
nonexistent.

    Paul> I'm inclined to view these data as an indication of the interest
level
    Paul> in EC; it supports Paul Hoffman's suggestion.

  My understanding is that there are specific patents (less than a decade
old) on hardware accelerated EC. I do not recall who owed them, wasn't HiFn
or RSA/Verisign though.

]       ON HUMILITY: to err is human. To moo, bovine.           |  firewalls
[
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net
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] mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device
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