IDEA License

[Julian H. Stacey]

Thanks Ulrich for your email below, 
It didn't make it to gnupg-users at gnupg.org & to
 http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2013-March/date.html#end

so I'm appending it & will point to it from
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Data_Encryption_Algorithm#Availability

------------------------------
> From:		Ulrich Mueller <ulm @ gentoo . o r g> 
> Date:		Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:19:37 +0100 
> 
> >>>>> On Tue, 26 Mar 2013, Julian H Stacey wrote:
> 
> > OK I added Ulrich M to cc
> > He can add URL to wikipedia of expiry date of Japan IDEA paent
> > if he wants, or I will if he mails it me.
> > A dead patent is a good patent ;-)
> 
> IANAL, TINLA, but the term of patent in Japan seems to be 20 years and
> it was filed in 1991. Concerning the exact date, here's what I had
> written in my message to the FSF, about one year ago:
> 
> | To the best of my knowledge, the IDEA algorithm was covered by the
> | following patents held by Ascom Tech AG, Bern, Switzerland:
> |  - Europe: EP0482154 [1]
> |  - U.S.:   5,214,703 [2]
> |  - Japan:  JP3225440
> | These patents were filed in 1991. All sources (see [3] and [4] and
> | references cited therein) seem to agree that the European and the
> | Japanese patent both have expired on 2011-05-16.
> |
> | About the U.S. patent the situation seems not so clear, as there are
> | several expiry dates mentioned. The PGP FAQ [3] says it has expired on
> | 2010-05-25 whereas Wikipedia [4,5] mentions 2011-05-16 and 2012-01-07.
> | However, none of these dates is later than 2012-01-07. So I think it
> | is safe to assume that the U.S. patent has expired, too.
> |
> | [1] <http://register.epoline.org/espacenet/application?number=EP91908542>
> | [2] <http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5214703>
> | [3] <http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/#PATENT-IDEA>
> | [4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Data_Encryption_Algorithm>
> | [5] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:International_Data_Encryption_Algorithm#Explanation_of_U.S._patent_expiration>
> 
> Ulrich
------------------------------

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com
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