Re: [TLS] DSS with other than SHA-1 algorithms

[Rob Stradling <[e-mail]>]

On Thursday 12 May 2011 11:10:50 Rob Stradling wrote:
<snip>
> Hi Paul.  Thanks for pointing me at RFC 6090.  I'd not seen it before.  I
> agree that it appears to claim that issuing ECC certs is unencumbered by
> patents.
> 
> I wonder if Certicom are aware of this RFC, and if so, what their opinion
> of it is.

Certicom made an IPR disclosure [1] in relation to draft-03 of what is now RFC 
6090.  Thanks to those who told me about this off-list.

I believe that Certicom's opinion is that commercial CAs would need to license 
at least [2] and [3] before they could...
  - verify the parameters of an EC public key supplied by a customer.
  - use the ECDSA algorithm to sign a certificate for a customer.

So I return to my original conclusion: Yes, the CAs are impeded by patents.

A colleague recalled a case (identities removed) to me recently:
"I remember that one of the biggest hits that Company X took was getting into 
a patent dispute with Company Y.  The Company Y claims were absolute 
unmitigated crud.  Company X won hands down.  But it cost them $2 million and 
it defocused their executive management team for over a year".

IANAL or a cryptographer.  I don't know if Certicom would win or lose a patent 
dispute against a commercial CA that issued ECC certs without a license.  But 
even if I was confident that Certicom would lose, I wouldn't want to pay $2M in 
legal fees.

IMHO, commercial CAs will only start issuing ECC certs if Certicom will first 
devise a suitable licensing scheme.

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1337/
[2] http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6704870.html
[3] http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7215773.html

<snip>

Rob Stradling
Senior Research & Development Scientist
COMODO - Creating Trust Online