3 ms·

Besides the alleged plagiarism of Peikert, it seems massively immoral of Ding to lay a patent landmine in something important as secure communications for the n

• gjm11 5y ago
  Suppose you think up something brilliant that could be a big improvement to secure communications for the next century. Isn't it reasonable to expect to benefit from it? The whole point of the patent system is to enable people to benefit from thinking up brilliant somethings from which everyone will benefit. I'm not a big fan of the patent system and maybe we'd all be better off with something else, or with nothing at all, but given that the system's there it's not unreasonable for people who think up valuable things to use it. (Within reason! If Ding says "everyone who uses this has to give me ten billion dollars" then obviously what happens is that Ding gets no money and no one else gets to use Ding's idea, and that's plainly the worst of all worlds. But presumably Ding isn't stupid and that sort of outcome is unlikely.) Obviously it's a different matter if e.g. there are other equally good ways to do Ding's thing and Ding tried to conceal his patent in the hope that others would pick his way of doing it and make expensive-to-change decisions from which he could then profit. (I'm not sure whether "the alleged plagiarism of Peikert" means "Ding's alleged plagiarism of Peikert" or "the alleged plagiarism committed by Peikert"; what Bernstein is alleging is definitely the latter.)