re help some nut is threatening to sue i don t wish to rehash the pgp patent issue at all but i do feel that some potential misconceptions in interpretting intellectual property laws need to be raised in article a rubin dsg dse beckman com a rubin dsg dse beckman com arthur rubin writes if pgp violates rsas patents then only executing pgp could be a violation distributing pgp could be contributory infringement but the pgp documentation seemed sufficient to me to protect distributors before i deleted it using pgp might be a patent violation in the us so i have no need to keep it you are correct that executing pgp would be a violation unless the patent were declared invalid by the courts but there is a question as to when how or if distributing pgp would be a violation if the person or company distributing pgp receives money for doing so then it is clearly a sale for example if it were on compuserve they charge you for access so they would be selling pgp when there is no charge for pgp things get less clear but there would still be a reasonable view that it is inducing an infringement nb re jim bidzos you have no legal action you can take unless you believe you can prove someone is using pgp in the us for a purpose other than that specifically allowed by patent laws not entirely correct anyone can sue for any reason but you cannot prevail unless you can prove that by a prepoderance of evidence under patent laws pgp does have legitimate uses as a means to study your algorithm in order to produce improvements which would still require your approval to execute until the patent runs out around this is a common misconception the patent laws do not mention any valid purpose for infringing a patent although it is clear that in order to create a new invention either based on a prior patent or to avoid infringing a prior patent one must perform research on an existing patent to just say that you infringed a patent assume we re not talking the rsa patent only for research purposes wink wink nudge nudge and then never develop any related invention ie only use it would be a clear infringement glenn tenney voice fax tenney netcom com ham radio aa er
