2008/09/13

how (software) patents can bother your development

Yesterday, I receive an answer from Jivson (the author of the 'ECC in OpenPGP' internet draft) from a couple of mails discussing something about how to play with the standard to made easy some future improvements.

I'm working in an improvement of the eccGnuPG project to add the feature to reset the cryptosystem using isogeny stars like Er Rostovtsev, Anton Stolbunov propouse.

To create this isogeny stars can be usefull that they have a cofactor 2 (or at most 4, like the standards recomend) in order to have easier ways to compute a path in the stars. My surprice arribes when Jivson draws me the attention on the point that cofactor division is under a patent.

I trust on it, but I cannot find this yet. Maybe this idea with I'm working now, will be patented by someone else some day. And I can be obligated again to drop some work because an stupid patent. This is the third time that patents bother my work on elliptic curves.

This is incredible, simply unacceptable.

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