Re: Proposal: Remove MKCRYPTO_RC5

[Taylor R Campbell <riastradh%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

> Date: Sat, 6 May 2017 16:19:58 +0800 (+08)
> From: Paul Goyette <paul%whooppee.com@localhost>
> 
> Without considering the expiry date of the patents themselves, I was 
> under the impression that RC5 and RC6 were registered trademarks.  So, 
> do we have any issues from a trademark perspective?

It seems hard to imagine litigation about that, given that RC4 is a
registered trademark too and appears everywhere -- unless we started
going around using the name `RC5' for some other algorithm.

Twenty years ago it was conventional to refer to RC4 as `ARC4' or
`arcfour' for `Alleged RC4', but I think that was more because it was
formally a trade secret at the time.

(As an aside, this `trade secret' was leaked to sci.scrypt in the
early nineties, and broken within days of its publication.  It's kind
of embarrassing for the world that it remained in widespread use for
twenty years in spite of its having being practically, not even
theoretically, broken with the computational power of early-'90s
laptops...)

That said, if any trademark claims about RC5 did arise from RSA, Inc.,
I'd be even happier to ditch it.