Subject: Possible patent issue with UTCTime hack

From: Marc Branchaud <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 17:47:05 -0800

It seems that McDonnell Douglas has patented the date "windowing" that is
used to get around Y2K problems:

	http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1009-200-1426450.html

Since PKIX requires windowing UTCTime in certs, this may violate the patent
(note: I don't know anything about anything, especially patents).

		Marc

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From: "Tim Dierks" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 17:24:51 -0800

Patent number appears to be 5806063, filed Oct. 3, 1996. I believe there's a
lot of prior art (possibly including PKIX drafts). I wouldn't worry about it
too much.

<http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US05806063__>

Tim Dierks
VP of Engineering, Certicom
[email-masked]
510.780.5409 [Hayward] -- 905.501.3791 [Mississauga]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf
> Of Marc Branchaud
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 1999 5:47 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Possible patent issue with UTCTime hack
>
>
>

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From: "Todd Glassey @ GMT" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 07:59:41 -0800

Marc,
Seems to me that the problem in Certs is that there is no culpable mechanism
to deploy and prove the availability of "credible time" data. I think that
Certs should, in themselves, only list absolute time points, the use models
should provide a centerpoint of the windowing scheme that is reflected in
the evaluating of the Certs, but anyone that uses any time centric services
is responsible to prove that their time data is accurate and believable.
Especially CA's, RA's and other trust processors.

Seems to me that the key here is process used in the time setting services,
that is what and how the underlying OS has the Timebase set and proves it.
With this in mind, how would you get secure time data into a system?

Todd

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From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 22:32:31 -0500

Todd,

Many of us are getting rather tired of seeing messages from you promoting
your company's time service notions whenever any time-related topic pops up
on any list, not just PKIX.

Steve