Score:4

Is there a good rundown anywhere on the NIST vs CNRS patent disputes on lattice cryptography?

cn flag

As I understand it from web conference hearsay, the Kyber and Saber entries to the NIST post quantum cryptography competition have been subject to a patent claim from the CNRS. The creators of the schemes wanted their cryptosystems to be public domain and opposed the legal claims based on mathematical grounds, which was apparently ignored by the lawyers.

Does anyone know what the exact extent of the CNRS patent claims are? Do they apply only to the KEMs or do they extend to any of the signature schemes as well? It would be great to have a good rundown of the legal status of the concerned systems.

poncho avatar
my flag
I don't have an authoritative answer to your question (and I would be interested in hearing it), but a couple of things you misheard: for one, I don't believe that there's currently any pending lawsuits; what CNRS has is a patent that may (or may not) cover Kyber and Saber (and so CNRS wouldn't have copyright claims, but patent claims). I have looked through their patent; while IANAL, it would appear to cover only KEMs and not signatures (hence answering some part of your question).
poncho avatar
my flag
Also, neither Kyber nor Saber are specifically French; the Kyber team has only one French individual (Damien Stehle) out of ten, and the Saber team appears to be based in Belgium (KU Leuven). CNRS ("National Center for Scientific Research"), on the other hand, is a French company (think tank? reseach group? I'm not quite sure)
cn flag
OK, made a quick edit to the question to clarify that for now it's a patent claim, not a lawsuit, and also just referred to the two affected KEMs specifically by name.
Chris Peikert avatar
in flag
This doesn’t directly answer your question (and I doubt anybody here can), but this may be of interest: https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1364
poncho avatar
my flag
@ChrisPeikert: unfortunately, the question of whether the patent applies is ultimately not a technical one, but a legal one - it is unlikely to be settled until a judge makes a ruling (and that certainly won't happen anytime soon...)
Chris Peikert avatar
in flag
A legal decision, yes, but one that would be heavily informed by the technical arguments.
djao avatar
cn flag
Patents are not copyrights. This question conflates the two terms. They are not at all interchangeable. This is not a small error.
cn flag
@djao The slash implies "or", not "interchangable". But I think I'll change the question to the more generic "intellectual property claim" to avoid confusion on this
Frédéric Grosshans avatar
co flag
@poncho : To answer your side question, without any impact on the matter discussed here: the CNRS is a research agency, part of the French administration (see [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_National_Centre_for_Scientific_Research) ).
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