Is Zfone covered by any patents?
I think software patents stifle innovation and have done a great deal of harm to the software industry, especially in the crypto world. I agree with the League for Programming Freedom on this matter. The RSA patent holders wielded their patent to do all they could to destroy PGP in the 1990s. I don’t ever want to experience this problem again, so I applied for a patent relating to some aspects of Zfone and plan to use it defensively against other companies who might make patent claims against us in the future. We have filed an Intellectual Property declaration with the IETF regarding any patent rights we may have in the future, and have offered a royalty-free license under most conditions, for people who don’t sue us. Having the patent also allows us to better serve the user community’s interests by providing leverage to get other ZRTP implementors to abide by ZRTP’s back-door-resistant features. For more details, see the IPR statement we filed with the IETF. Keep in mind that the IPR
