Dean:
Thanks. It appears my only misconception was thinking that Certicom sold the patents outright---it did not. Rather, it sold the _licensing_ rights to 26 patents to the NSA.
It is a nonexclusive relationship. That is important too.
However, this misconception is hardly relevant to the concerns I raised. Indeed, it appears to be the case that I was correct on the principle issue: That the general public is not licenced to use these patents on implementing this draft.
Right. This is the reason the document is a candidate for the standards track. The idea of the informational specification is so that anyone that chooses to use this technology can do so in an interoperable way.
Russ _______________________________________________ TLS mailing list TLS@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tls