• Dreeg Ocedam@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    One thing that I recently had to face is the existence of patents for cryptography. There have been multiple time in history (and there are still some today) where patents prevent the widespread use of a cryptographic primitive or cipher, so instead worse ciphers are used.

    How did we get to the point where we have to pay to perform mathematical operations?

    • Support Trans People@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      How did we get to the point where we have to pay to perform mathematical operations?

      in 2012 a new patent law was passed that allowed software (and math) patents, before that it was still ambiguous if they were legal but after 2012 things went crazy

      it’s rather old but patent absurdity is still a valuable documentary

    • tmpodA
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      3 years ago

      Never heard of that problem in crytography; could you point out some examples?

      • Dreeg Ocedam@lemmy.ml
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        3 years ago

        Schnorr Signatures for example, the patent expired in 2008.

        Regarding patents still valid today, there are multiple patents regarding Password Authenticated Key Exchanges, which lead to weird designs which are generally less secure such as SRP.