I don't wish to rehash the PGP patent issue at all, but I do feel
that some potential misconceptions in interpretting intellectual property
laws need to be raised.


You are correct that executing PGP would be a violation (unless the patent
were declared invalid by the courts), but...  there is a question as
to when, how, or if distributing PGP would be a violation.  If the person
or company distributing PGP receives money for doing so, then it is
clearly a sale (for example, if it were on Compuserve, they charge you
for access so they would be selling PGP).  When there is no charge for
PGP things get less clear, but there would still be a reasonable view
that it is inducing an infringement.


This is a common misconception.  The patent laws do not mention any valid
purpose for infringing a patent.  Although it is clear that in order to
create a new invention either based on a prior patent or to avoid infringing
a prior patent, one must perform research on an existing patent.  To
just say that you infringed a patent (assume we're not talking the RSA
patent) only for research purposes (wink wink, nudge nudge) and then never
develop any related invention (ie. only use it), would be a clear
infringement.
