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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 10 2013 @ 10:20 PM EDT |
I have a vague recollection of an add on card that used radioactive decay as a
method at arriving at a random seed to be used in a cryptographic systems. Such
an arrangement of computer hardware may be patentable but the pure maths
(software) should not be.
This does remind me of the absurdity of patenting maths as in the famous RSA
encryption algorithm. This was likely allowed by the government to control the
spread of this dangerous knowledge. Encryption systems were evens placed on the
'munitions list' thus restricting who you could export your products too.
So i really wonder if the RSA patent was the first software patent actually
granted by the USTPO and granted for governments security interests at the
expense of what was probably known to be ineligible subject matter by the
USTPO?
I guess after, what, 50, 75 or 100 years when historic security documents can be
requested via freedom of information legislation, we will finally find out :). [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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