Re: [CFRG] please use real names (was: Re: Small subgroup question for draft-irtf-cfrg-hash-to-curve)

[David Jacobson <[e-mail]>]

There are a few cases where real names matter.   Suppose company X gets a patent on something.  The legal department at company Y wants to invalidate that patent by showing that there was prior art.  So they search all sorts of archived emails to find out if that something was previously mentioned.  Suppose they find what appears to be prior art.  If the email author was not one of the inventors, they might have grounds for invalidating the patent.  But if the email author was one of the inventors, then, according to my understanding, the patent is still valid in the USA.   (Maybe not in other countries.)  In order to find that out, they need to know the real name of the email author.

   David Jacobson

> On Apr 11, 2021, at 19:53, Peter Gutmann <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]> writes:
> 
>> Why are we even having a discussion of pseudonymity when all that has
>> happened is someone didn't fill out the name field in whatever email client
>> they were using.
> 
> As someone pointed out long ago on the cypherpunks list, people get upset when
> they see a post by Big Blue Hedgehog but are quite happy when it's from...
> let's see, Bill.... uhhh, what's a good name... Door.  Yeah, Bill Door.
> 
> Peter.
> 
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