[TLS] Re: WG Adoption Call for Post-Quantum Hybrid ECDHE-MLKEM Key Agreement for TLSv1.3

[Stephen Farrell]

Hiya,

On 15/03/2025 10:14, Russ Housley wrote:

Stephen:

I did write to Yunlei and ask for an IPR disclosure.

Yes, and thanks for doing that.

As far as I
know, Yunlei has never participated in an IETF activity, so he has
not promised for follow the NOTE WELL.

Dan pointed the LAMPS WG to a message where KCL publicly claimed
patents related to ML-KEM (formerly known as Kyber):

https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/pqc-forum/c/Fm4cDfsx65s/
m/F63mixuWBAAJ

In that same mail archive, the following statement was made by the
same person regarding these patents:

https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/pqc-forum/c/Fm4cDfsx65s/
m/2NzgqoTaBAAJ

I note the following quote from the discussion (dated May 19, 2022,
5:03:08 AM) at that last URL: "Yes, certainly we can make such an
official claims about patents as you suggest. It may formally start the
work after NIST or other standard organizations show the applicability
interest." Maybe I'm being optimistic, but if that the and other
statements about those patents only being intended defensively are
the case, it'd seem like that set of inventors might be incented to
make an IETF IPR declaration if asked, e.g. by a set of WG chairs
and/or ADs.

Cheers,
S.

Russ

On 28/02/2025 18:56, Sean Turner wrote:

In response to the WG adoption call, Dan Bernstein pointed out
some potential IPR (see [0]), but no IPR disclosure has been
made in accordance with BCP 79.

the possible patent holders to ask if they'd be willing to make
a declaration. I've no idea where that's at, but I'd encourage
the TLS chairs and SEC ADs to see if they can help get that to
happen as reducing uncertainty would be good and if we can't,
then this topic will just keep cropping up and Dan is not the
only person I've heard express concerns in this regard.

Cheers, S.

While I don't think the lack of an IPR declaration is fatal here, I do think it'd be great if that uncertainty could be reduced. I think I saw that Russ tried to reach out to one of PS: I do realise we can't force someone to make an IPR declaration.

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