7 ms·

End-to-end double-ratchet encryption with epoch key exchange

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
more context: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1213356702399115267 https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1213356702399115267
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  Reading that thread, Alec apparently is not a patent lawyer and others pointed out what is really happening
  - alecmuffett 7y ago
    Indeed, I am not a patent lawyer; I am a crypto geek attempting to ascertain whether and to what extent this treads on current, and future, implementations of (edit: and enhancements to) the double ratchet algorithm. I believe that my tweets are pretty clear about that. ps: other people have simply said to "read the claims", which is fine but does not help clarify anything.
    - matthewdgreen 7y ago
      I’ve read the claims, and don’t currently see how they exclude Signal. Perhaps on claim construction it might be possible to dig into the specification and find non-standard interpretations of some terms that walk around the existing prior art. But that feels like a very unreliable approach.
      - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
        The patent office specifically looked at Signal and other implementations and states that the Examiner "has been unable to locate prior art that would suggest that the device sending a message in a particular epoch require its own private key in generation of the shared first refresh key and first state with the recipient device. Although using public keys to securely transmit data is known in the art . . . ." The patent Applicant states "Sarafa fails to [suggest each and every step of] 'generating on the first device, a first epoch key . . . transmitting, from the first device, the first epoch key . . . generating, independently on each of the first device and the second device, a first refresh key . . . *wherein the first refresh key is generated on the first device without requiring a private key corresponding to the first epoch key"
        matthewdgreen 7y ago
        I haven’t read the specification carefully enough yet to determine what they mean by “refresh key” since that’s not really a standard term of art. If this could refer to a Diffie-Hellman ephemeral, then said key would be generated without requiring a separate private key corresponding to the epoch key, something that’s also not really a standard term. My concern with patents like this is that, since many of the terms are non-standard and thus defined by the specification, any vagueness in the spec leaves room for future interpretations in an infringement case that may, in fact, lead to de facto Signal implementations being found to infringe. ETA: I’ll read the spec later this weekend and see how they define all these terms.
  - elmo2you 7y ago
    What are these others then pointing out, regarding what's really happening? All I see is how Alec is advised to focus on the claims of the patent. However, I do not see how that substantially changes the situation regard the double-ratched/signal algorithm and this patent. Could you be so kind to elaborate, please?
    - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
      Alex admitted "someone with a better attention span than myself" would need to read claim 1 to determine whether this reads on Signal or not (it does not).
rzzzt 7y ago
That screenshot with the timeline reminds me of a post earlier this year - the event page is trying to tell you that "Application status is Active (as of today)", ie. it will always be shown with the current date: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21932752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21932752 The application was already granted in 2019-09, and is set to expire 20 years from filing, 2039-02-05.
nickthemagicman 7y ago
Is Signal fighting it? What's to stop this from happening?
- ryanlol 7y ago
  > Is Signal fighting it? Why should they? This doesn’t affect them.
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    I interpreted it to mean: if Signal is using the technology, and the technology is patented, then Signal will be affected?
    - analog31 7y ago
      I'm not a lawyer, but making something and selling or publishing it constitutes a public disclosure, and invalidates anybody's attempt (including your own) to patent it after the fact. Somebody can't come along and patent your product. Now if you're working on an invention in your basement, and haven't disclosed it yet, someone else can take the same idea to the patent office.
      - elmo2you 7y ago
        True, at least in theory. While not all that much relevant in this particularly case (or at least not likely), I've heard from several patent lawyers (granted, this is still hearsay) that it is a rather common practice for big companies to patent any potentially relevant new technologies from smaller players (often when still under development), only to bully these potential competitors. Considering the high price of patent lawyers, this is sadly a rather effective method for protecting a dominant market position, but it's also very destructive to innovation as a whole (because apparently many of these patents are subsequently never used to actually produce anything). It's a rather cynical abuse of the system, and one that goes directly against its stated goal: to promote innovation. However, it could also be argued, from the (early) history of patents and how they have been used throughout time, that this has always been a charade, and it really was always more about controlling innovation and technological progress, rather than actually stimulating it.
deith 7y ago
Does it matter when there's prior art?
- alerighi 7y ago
  It does, but even if in a court you will probably win, you have to spend thousands of dollar of lawyers. This is why the patent system is unfair and should be abolished at all. It favors big companies that cross license their patents and crush the small developers, especially free software developers.
  - anaphor 7y ago
    The patent office will do a search for prior art, but they don't always get it right because they only do specific types of searches for prior art, which doesn't always give good results. https://www.uspto.gov/patent/initiatives/prior-art-search https://www.uspto.gov/patent/initiatives/prior-art-search
  - caro_douglos 7y ago
    You’re right it is not fair if that crossover occurs but keep in mind that the system hooks into international agreements the US has made and it’s not as if they can be overhauled for the little guy/gal.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      Speaking of ratchets, that's the purpose of such "international agreements" for patents, copyrights and so on. Countries A and B agree to accept each others "intellectual property". Then Country A says, well, for parity we ought to set X=10 in our law, like theirs, and since we're setting X=10 and we've always made Y ten more that X we should also set Y=20. Then in Country B they say oh, well there ought to be parity in our law too we should set Y=20 also, and we've always wanted X the same as Y so X=20. Back to Country A, there's just no choice, we have this international agreement but it wouldn't be fair unless we set X=20 like Country B did, and so now Y=30. You can keep doing this back and forth forever as you have time, ratcheting up both variables forever and always assuring any concerned citizens that your goal isn't "really" to just make the variables go up and steal from them, it's just "international agreements" force your hand. Nobody should fall for this.
kdkdkch 7y ago
I want to politely express my distaste of software patents, especially such trivial algorithms.
- lowdose 7y ago
  Is an algorithm patent really a defensible claim?
  - James-primitive 7y ago
    No. X
  - egdod 7y ago
    Simple question, but the answer is really complicated. The caselaw on Section 101 (patent-eligible subject matter) is extremely hard to make sense of.
- webmobdev 7y ago
  One of the things I am glad about in my country - India has a higher bar for "software" patents: > ... following CANNOT be considered as inventions within the meaning of the act. "A mathematical or business method or a computer program or algorithms"
  - cjbprime 7y ago
    In theory, so does the US.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  If this is trivial, it should be rejected. I also don't find this to be obvious -- there is a reason it took decades of working on end to end encrypted chat algorithms before they came up with something that has all the desirable properties of the double ratchet algorithm. This doesn't mean I'm in favor of or against software patents, I know too little about the topic. I just wanted to say that this isn't that trivial, and if it were, it would not be patentable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentability
elmo2you 7y ago
I'm not surprised to see the name of Qrypt's CTO (Denis Mandich) listed as one of the "inventors" on the application, but to see the name of a New York University professor (Yevgeniy Dodis) is rather baffling to me. Even more since the latter is supposed to be an expert in the field of crypto. I would think that an academic professor should know better than to try patent something that is already known publicly so well. I can't help but wonder if this is just pure cynicism at work: gaming a broken patent system (for profit), at the expense of (and to hell with) any academic/scientific authority/credibility/reputation. Or is there something I'm completely missing here? Regardless of whether the patent is granted or not, and unless I'm misunderstanding the whole situation, this professor should probably be deeply ashamed of himself and maybe even be ousted from academia altogether. EDIT: Not to even start the discussion of how mathematical algorithms shouldn't be patentible in the first place. EDIT #2: Changed CEO to CTO (typo mistake)
- Fnoord 7y ago
  That "somebody" is Qrypt, Inc [1]. (I've never heard of them.) Denis Mandich is the CTO. Interestingly, the patent application mentions Axolotl, Signal, and what not. Not sure how this sauce is different? Because of quantum cryptography? I did find [2] from their website as well. From [1] it says: "Kevin and Denis have hand-selected a talented team of seasoned leaders in engineering, physics, and cryptography to build Qrypt’s patented solution." I guess they can add "patent pending", too. [1] https://www.qrypt.com/about https://www.qrypt.com/about [2] https://www.ornl.gov/news/qrypt-licenses-ornls-quantum-random-number-generator-fortify-encryption-methods https://www.ornl.gov/news/qrypt-licenses-ornls-quantum-rando...
- egdod 7y ago
  This actually is a granted patent. Claim 1 seems quite specific and detailed to me, although I’m no crypto expert. Is everything in the claims well known?
  - elmo2you 7y ago
    Apparently you are right. I was mistakenly under the impression that it was still under review. I would call that claim first and foremost convoluted, more than specific and detailed, but that is a rather normal practice in patents (IFAIK). From what I've read (so far), I didn't see anything particularly innovative; not within the field of crypto at least. I'm quite confident that this is nothing particularly new to a crypto expert. I'd say it's all rather well known. Maybe not to Joe next door, but that's irrelevant. I'd say that this patent should never have been granted, but I can't say that I'm surprised that it did. However, those who filed for this patent must have known what they were doing. Unless my current view on this radically changes, I sincerely hope that it will (somehow, eventually) cost the people involved dearly. I have no sympathy for anyone who would game a broken system like that, as it so far appears they did. Even if not criminal, legally speaking, I still consider it moral corruption to a high degree.
lucb1e 7y ago
I don't understand: the patent mentions that this is currently "ubiquitous" in the form of the Signal protocol. Isn't that basically telling the patent office there is prior art, i.e. they undermine their own patent application? The relevant part of the patent application: > The Axolotl Ratchet aka the Double Ratchet Algorithm is modeled on the Diffie-Hellman asymmetric ratchet in the Off-the-Record (OTR) messaging system and symmetric key ratchets used by the Silent Circle messaging protocol, resulting in the currently ubiquitous Signal Protocol. It goes on to say "While there are a limited number of security proofs of specific implementations, there are none for the generalized protocol". So even if the patent were to be granted on the basis of that this is general instead of specific, then the specific Signal protocol should not be in violation of this patent.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  I think what they're going for is a "But X" variant where this time X is post-quantum cryptography. You might remember "But X" patents from when they were all for the Internet. You know "It's a bookshop but Internet" or "It's paying for a magazine subscription but Internet". Some of these patents were subsequently invalidated, many made their "Inventors" plenty of money anyway. Most of today's sensible crypto designs can be mechanically transformed into something safe for a post-quantum world by sprinkling the right post-quantum ingredients in the right places and putting a XOR somewhere. The "great" thing about patents is that you can be vague about parts that you don't specifically claim, to the point where they aren't even invented yet, and still succeed in the application. You have to guess that the missing pieces will get discovered, doesn't matter who by, before you stop being able to incrementally file modified patents for the same "invention" and then you can collect all the money because your "invention" is essential. So they won't even need to propose a specific post quantum algorithm anywhere, they can leave that as a black box. When something gets invented, their patent covers it being used in the obvious way. This sort of nonsense is another reason patents should be scrapped rather than reformed.
  - matthewdgreen 7y ago
    The main independent claim doesn’t specifically call out quantum algorithms. I’m struggling to see how Signal/Axolotl doesn’t match every element.
James-primitive 7y ago
>>DyslexicAtheist Lets hope you are an atheist...
z0mbie42 7y ago
Just in case: the methodology by which CloudFlare destroyed a patent troll: https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-project-jengo-saga-how-cloudflare-stood-up-to-a-patent-troll-and-won/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-project-jengo-saga-how-cloud...
maruko 7y ago
aaaa
dang 7y ago
We changed the title from "Somebody is trying to patent Signal's double-ratchet crypto", which broke the site guidelines by editorializing—and which, based on how common it is for patent applications to be misread on HN, I suspect someone will point out is not strictly true. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, do not do so by cherry-picking a detail to put in the title. Instead, post it is a comment in the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22level%20playing%20field%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: since https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1213356702399115267 https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1213356702399115267 was the context for this, it would have been ok to submit that itself. Note how that tweet doesn't make the same claim. It just asks the question. So even the tweet was editorialized here.
- missosoup 7y ago
  I think this change of title is detrimental. The original title signalled the context of this article which is far more important than the premise. The new title reveals nothing of the context and a layman interpretation changes from 'is someone is trying to patent an existing crypto algorithm?' to 'some article about some crypto algorithm'.
  - ricardobeat 7y ago
    Seconded. The whole news story here is that someone is patenting Signal's algorithm (or something very similar to it) and not just a random interesting patent.
    - pvg 7y ago
      You can't make up your own title to say what you think the story is but there are lots of options that are not that like - find a story that has the framing/title you want, write a comment, write your own story/title and post that.
hackworks 7y ago
Most software companies I have worked for, encourages filing patents just to build their arsenal and increase their market value in times of acquisitions or patent wars. They are not focused on creativity, innovation or advancement. I have seen a patent to use SSH to administer a storage system! It was just depressing and sad to see such patents granted and the inventors bragging about it.
- _jal 7y ago
  > I have seen a patent to use SSH to administer a storage system People should be embarrassed. So many nerds have this self-image of being a change-the-world conquering intellect, and then spend their day trying to game a bullshit system to pull a few bucks from their neighbor's pocket. And they're not capable of actually making anything, so they try to patent bog-standard uses of other people's tools. Their bragging about it is a blessing, though. Makes them easier to avoid.
  - Psyladine 7y ago
    As long as there are no rounded corners, ya. Sent from my i-branded device
motohagiography 7y ago
Great way to get free strong crypto software chased out of app stores, and prevent its proliferation. If I were in the bulk signals collection business, I would also file a patent that legally discouraged the implementation of the best known scheme for end to end encryption as well. Patent office may grant it under pressure.
RedComet 7y ago
The real tragedy of a troll patenting parts of the protocol developed at Signal is that Signal had millions of dollars of US government funding behind it.

more context: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1213356702399115267 https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1213356702399115267

onetimemanytime 7y ago
Reading that thread, Alec apparently is not a patent lawyer and others pointed out what is really happening
- alecmuffett 7y ago
  Indeed, I am not a patent lawyer; I am a crypto geek attempting to ascertain whether and to what extent this treads on current, and future, implementations of (edit: and enhancements to) the double ratchet algorithm. I believe that my tweets are pretty clear about that. ps: other people have simply said to "read the claims", which is fine but does not help clarify anything.
  - matthewdgreen 7y ago
    I’ve read the claims, and don’t currently see how they exclude Signal. Perhaps on claim construction it might be possible to dig into the specification and find non-standard interpretations of some terms that walk around the existing prior art. But that feels like a very unreliable approach.
    - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
      The patent office specifically looked at Signal and other implementations and states that the Examiner "has been unable to locate prior art that would suggest that the device sending a message in a particular epoch require its own private key in generation of the shared first refresh key and first state with the recipient device. Although using public keys to securely transmit data is known in the art . . . ." The patent Applicant states "Sarafa fails to [suggest each and every step of] 'generating on the first device, a first epoch key . . . transmitting, from the first device, the first epoch key . . . generating, independently on each of the first device and the second device, a first refresh key . . . *wherein the first refresh key is generated on the first device without requiring a private key corresponding to the first epoch key"
      - matthewdgreen 7y ago
        I haven’t read the specification carefully enough yet to determine what they mean by “refresh key” since that’s not really a standard term of art. If this could refer to a Diffie-Hellman ephemeral, then said key would be generated without requiring a separate private key corresponding to the epoch key, something that’s also not really a standard term. My concern with patents like this is that, since many of the terms are non-standard and thus defined by the specification, any vagueness in the spec leaves room for future interpretations in an infringement case that may, in fact, lead to de facto Signal implementations being found to infringe. ETA: I’ll read the spec later this weekend and see how they define all these terms.
- elmo2you 7y ago
  What are these others then pointing out, regarding what's really happening? All I see is how Alec is advised to focus on the claims of the patent. However, I do not see how that substantially changes the situation regard the double-ratched/signal algorithm and this patent. Could you be so kind to elaborate, please?
  - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
    Alex admitted "someone with a better attention span than myself" would need to read claim 1 to determine whether this reads on Signal or not (it does not).

rzzzt 7y ago

That screenshot with the timeline reminds me of a post earlier this year - the event page is trying to tell you that "Application status is Active (as of today)", ie. it will always be shown with the current date: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21932752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21932752 The application was already granted in 2019-09, and is set to expire 20 years from filing, 2039-02-05.

nickthemagicman 7y ago

Is Signal fighting it? What's to stop this from happening?

ryanlol 7y ago
> Is Signal fighting it? Why should they? This doesn’t affect them.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  I interpreted it to mean: if Signal is using the technology, and the technology is patented, then Signal will be affected?
  - analog31 7y ago
    I'm not a lawyer, but making something and selling or publishing it constitutes a public disclosure, and invalidates anybody's attempt (including your own) to patent it after the fact. Somebody can't come along and patent your product. Now if you're working on an invention in your basement, and haven't disclosed it yet, someone else can take the same idea to the patent office.
    - elmo2you 7y ago
      True, at least in theory. While not all that much relevant in this particularly case (or at least not likely), I've heard from several patent lawyers (granted, this is still hearsay) that it is a rather common practice for big companies to patent any potentially relevant new technologies from smaller players (often when still under development), only to bully these potential competitors. Considering the high price of patent lawyers, this is sadly a rather effective method for protecting a dominant market position, but it's also very destructive to innovation as a whole (because apparently many of these patents are subsequently never used to actually produce anything). It's a rather cynical abuse of the system, and one that goes directly against its stated goal: to promote innovation. However, it could also be argued, from the (early) history of patents and how they have been used throughout time, that this has always been a charade, and it really was always more about controlling innovation and technological progress, rather than actually stimulating it.

deith 7y ago

Does it matter when there's prior art?

alerighi 7y ago
It does, but even if in a court you will probably win, you have to spend thousands of dollar of lawyers. This is why the patent system is unfair and should be abolished at all. It favors big companies that cross license their patents and crush the small developers, especially free software developers.
- anaphor 7y ago
  The patent office will do a search for prior art, but they don't always get it right because they only do specific types of searches for prior art, which doesn't always give good results. https://www.uspto.gov/patent/initiatives/prior-art-search https://www.uspto.gov/patent/initiatives/prior-art-search
- caro_douglos 7y ago
  You’re right it is not fair if that crossover occurs but keep in mind that the system hooks into international agreements the US has made and it’s not as if they can be overhauled for the little guy/gal.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    Speaking of ratchets, that's the purpose of such "international agreements" for patents, copyrights and so on. Countries A and B agree to accept each others "intellectual property". Then Country A says, well, for parity we ought to set X=10 in our law, like theirs, and since we're setting X=10 and we've always made Y ten more that X we should also set Y=20. Then in Country B they say oh, well there ought to be parity in our law too we should set Y=20 also, and we've always wanted X the same as Y so X=20. Back to Country A, there's just no choice, we have this international agreement but it wouldn't be fair unless we set X=20 like Country B did, and so now Y=30. You can keep doing this back and forth forever as you have time, ratcheting up both variables forever and always assuring any concerned citizens that your goal isn't "really" to just make the variables go up and steal from them, it's just "international agreements" force your hand. Nobody should fall for this.

kdkdkch 7y ago

I want to politely express my distaste of software patents, especially such trivial algorithms.

lowdose 7y ago
Is an algorithm patent really a defensible claim?
- James-primitive 7y ago
  No. X
- egdod 7y ago
  Simple question, but the answer is really complicated. The caselaw on Section 101 (patent-eligible subject matter) is extremely hard to make sense of.
webmobdev 7y ago
One of the things I am glad about in my country - India has a higher bar for "software" patents: > ... following CANNOT be considered as inventions within the meaning of the act. "A mathematical or business method or a computer program or algorithms"
- cjbprime 7y ago
  In theory, so does the US.
lucb1e 7y ago
If this is trivial, it should be rejected. I also don't find this to be obvious -- there is a reason it took decades of working on end to end encrypted chat algorithms before they came up with something that has all the desirable properties of the double ratchet algorithm. This doesn't mean I'm in favor of or against software patents, I know too little about the topic. I just wanted to say that this isn't that trivial, and if it were, it would not be patentable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentability

elmo2you 7y ago

I'm not surprised to see the name of Qrypt's CTO (Denis Mandich) listed as one of the "inventors" on the application, but to see the name of a New York University professor (Yevgeniy Dodis) is rather baffling to me. Even more since the latter is supposed to be an expert in the field of crypto. I would think that an academic professor should know better than to try patent something that is already known publicly so well. I can't help but wonder if this is just pure cynicism at work: gaming a broken patent system (for profit), at the expense of (and to hell with) any academic/scientific authority/credibility/reputation. Or is there something I'm completely missing here? Regardless of whether the patent is granted or not, and unless I'm misunderstanding the whole situation, this professor should probably be deeply ashamed of himself and maybe even be ousted from academia altogether. EDIT: Not to even start the discussion of how mathematical algorithms shouldn't be patentible in the first place. EDIT #2: Changed CEO to CTO (typo mistake)

Fnoord 7y ago
That "somebody" is Qrypt, Inc [1]. (I've never heard of them.) Denis Mandich is the CTO. Interestingly, the patent application mentions Axolotl, Signal, and what not. Not sure how this sauce is different? Because of quantum cryptography? I did find [2] from their website as well. From [1] it says: "Kevin and Denis have hand-selected a talented team of seasoned leaders in engineering, physics, and cryptography to build Qrypt’s patented solution." I guess they can add "patent pending", too. [1] https://www.qrypt.com/about https://www.qrypt.com/about [2] https://www.ornl.gov/news/qrypt-licenses-ornls-quantum-random-number-generator-fortify-encryption-methods https://www.ornl.gov/news/qrypt-licenses-ornls-quantum-rando...
egdod 7y ago
This actually is a granted patent. Claim 1 seems quite specific and detailed to me, although I’m no crypto expert. Is everything in the claims well known?
- elmo2you 7y ago
  Apparently you are right. I was mistakenly under the impression that it was still under review. I would call that claim first and foremost convoluted, more than specific and detailed, but that is a rather normal practice in patents (IFAIK). From what I've read (so far), I didn't see anything particularly innovative; not within the field of crypto at least. I'm quite confident that this is nothing particularly new to a crypto expert. I'd say it's all rather well known. Maybe not to Joe next door, but that's irrelevant. I'd say that this patent should never have been granted, but I can't say that I'm surprised that it did. However, those who filed for this patent must have known what they were doing. Unless my current view on this radically changes, I sincerely hope that it will (somehow, eventually) cost the people involved dearly. I have no sympathy for anyone who would game a broken system like that, as it so far appears they did. Even if not criminal, legally speaking, I still consider it moral corruption to a high degree.

lucb1e 7y ago

I don't understand: the patent mentions that this is currently "ubiquitous" in the form of the Signal protocol. Isn't that basically telling the patent office there is prior art, i.e. they undermine their own patent application? The relevant part of the patent application: > The Axolotl Ratchet aka the Double Ratchet Algorithm is modeled on the Diffie-Hellman asymmetric ratchet in the Off-the-Record (OTR) messaging system and symmetric key ratchets used by the Silent Circle messaging protocol, resulting in the currently ubiquitous Signal Protocol. It goes on to say "While there are a limited number of security proofs of specific implementations, there are none for the generalized protocol". So even if the patent were to be granted on the basis of that this is general instead of specific, then the specific Signal protocol should not be in violation of this patent.

tialaramex 7y ago
I think what they're going for is a "But X" variant where this time X is post-quantum cryptography. You might remember "But X" patents from when they were all for the Internet. You know "It's a bookshop but Internet" or "It's paying for a magazine subscription but Internet". Some of these patents were subsequently invalidated, many made their "Inventors" plenty of money anyway. Most of today's sensible crypto designs can be mechanically transformed into something safe for a post-quantum world by sprinkling the right post-quantum ingredients in the right places and putting a XOR somewhere. The "great" thing about patents is that you can be vague about parts that you don't specifically claim, to the point where they aren't even invented yet, and still succeed in the application. You have to guess that the missing pieces will get discovered, doesn't matter who by, before you stop being able to incrementally file modified patents for the same "invention" and then you can collect all the money because your "invention" is essential. So they won't even need to propose a specific post quantum algorithm anywhere, they can leave that as a black box. When something gets invented, their patent covers it being used in the obvious way. This sort of nonsense is another reason patents should be scrapped rather than reformed.
- matthewdgreen 7y ago
  The main independent claim doesn’t specifically call out quantum algorithms. I’m struggling to see how Signal/Axolotl doesn’t match every element.

James-primitive 7y ago

>>DyslexicAtheist Lets hope you are an atheist...

z0mbie42 7y ago

Just in case: the methodology by which CloudFlare destroyed a patent troll: https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-project-jengo-saga-how-cloudflare-stood-up-to-a-patent-troll-and-won/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-project-jengo-saga-how-cloud...

maruko 7y ago

aaaa

dang 7y ago

We changed the title from "Somebody is trying to patent Signal's double-ratchet crypto", which broke the site guidelines by editorializing—and which, based on how common it is for patent applications to be misread on HN, I suspect someone will point out is not strictly true. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, do not do so by cherry-picking a detail to put in the title. Instead, post it is a comment in the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22level%20playing%20field%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: since https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1213356702399115267 https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1213356702399115267 was the context for this, it would have been ok to submit that itself. Note how that tweet doesn't make the same claim. It just asks the question. So even the tweet was editorialized here.

missosoup 7y ago
I think this change of title is detrimental. The original title signalled the context of this article which is far more important than the premise. The new title reveals nothing of the context and a layman interpretation changes from 'is someone is trying to patent an existing crypto algorithm?' to 'some article about some crypto algorithm'.
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  Seconded. The whole news story here is that someone is patenting Signal's algorithm (or something very similar to it) and not just a random interesting patent.
  - pvg 7y ago
    You can't make up your own title to say what you think the story is but there are lots of options that are not that like - find a story that has the framing/title you want, write a comment, write your own story/title and post that.

hackworks 7y ago

Most software companies I have worked for, encourages filing patents just to build their arsenal and increase their market value in times of acquisitions or patent wars. They are not focused on creativity, innovation or advancement. I have seen a patent to use SSH to administer a storage system! It was just depressing and sad to see such patents granted and the inventors bragging about it.

_jal 7y ago
> I have seen a patent to use SSH to administer a storage system People should be embarrassed. So many nerds have this self-image of being a change-the-world conquering intellect, and then spend their day trying to game a bullshit system to pull a few bucks from their neighbor's pocket. And they're not capable of actually making anything, so they try to patent bog-standard uses of other people's tools. Their bragging about it is a blessing, though. Makes them easier to avoid.
- Psyladine 7y ago
  As long as there are no rounded corners, ya. Sent from my i-branded device

motohagiography 7y ago

Great way to get free strong crypto software chased out of app stores, and prevent its proliferation. If I were in the bulk signals collection business, I would also file a patent that legally discouraged the implementation of the best known scheme for end to end encryption as well. Patent office may grant it under pressure.

RedComet 7y ago

The real tragedy of a troll patenting parts of the protocol developed at Signal is that Signal had millions of dollars of US government funding behind it.