OCB: Offer Letter

Phillip Rogaway
rogaway@cs.ucdavis.edu
www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway
1212 Purdue Drive
Davis, California 95616 USA

29 March 2005

Dear OCB Interested Parties:

I am the inventor of the cryptographic schemes known as OCB. This is a blockcipher mode of operation combining privacy and authenticity and having many desirable security and efficiency characteristics. As has been disclosed many times before, I have pending patents that cover OCB (US Applications 09/918,615 and 09/948,084).

In a letter of 3 May 2001, I have already provided my assurance that I will license the above IP under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. The purpose the offer letter you are reading is to go beyond those statements and flesh-out under what terms I am currently licensing OCB.

For the remainder of calendar year 2005, I am licensing all of my IP in this connection (the two pending patents above, and anything derivative or related) for a one-time fee of $70K. The license is a fully paid-up license. There are no ongoing royalties of any sort.

Beyond the above license, a free license is granted for any non-commercial, non-governmental application of OCB. A free license is also granted for software released under GNU GPL (General Public License). Finally, let me emphasize that I have only US patents related to OCB, so those outside of the USA selling products outside of the USA need not concern themselves with licensing from me.

Though licensing terms may change, the terms will always remain simple, fair, and public. I am committed to making licensing easy and transparent. Those who have requested a license have gotten one quickly and with little fuss.

I understand that licensing is unpopular for cryptographic schemes. I have chosen to license in a way that licensing from me should not be a major cost in your overall cost of bringing a product to market. And licensing from me will not be a barrier to using OCB in a context, such as GPL code, where traditional licensing is inappropriate. It is my hope that OCB will, in time, become widely used, and I shall do what I can to facilitate this happening.

Please do no hesitate to contact me.


Sincerely,
Phillip Rogaway


Back to the OCB homepage