Ask HN: Cryptographic patent--how to generate interest?

[patentquestion]

What's the standard operating procedure for getting government agencies and private-sector companies interested in sponsoring research and development related to a cryptography patent?

Who are the best people to approach initially? We have research white papers and an export license from [x country] to back us up, and are looking for partners willing to buy/licence our intellectual property in the US or abroad.

Any thoughts or suggestions? If anyone could point me in the right direction, I'd be extremely grateful. Thanks!

[LeoSolaris]

Cryptography is a pure mathematic construct that is difficult for computer based algorithms to solve. Math formulae are not patentable. The implementation may be patentable, but no serious IT security trust closed source cryptography. The math can be perfectly sound, but a poor implementation will render the most advanced cryptography completely insecure. Closed source coding restricts the number of people with access to the code itself, which history has shown allows a significantly higher rate of coding errors.

The inherent untrustworthiness of closed source cryptography makes the current open source/academics grant model the only trusted and reliable method of distribution for a new crypto standard. Since the math is unpatentable in the US, it is a matter of time before there is an open source implementation. For reference, look into the history of PGP and GPG.

Many companies and government institutions do fiscally sponsored open source software, and setting up a non-profit foundation to allow further development is not terribly hard. Slightly less lucrative, though you would have the satisfaction of wide spread adoption and community involvement to make the implementation more secure.

It is getting rarer and rarer for companies to directly sell code. Most successful tech companies are service providers. If you can figure out a method of offering your new crypto as a service, perhaps similar to SSL CA's, you might have a viable market.

If you're dead set on the buy/license paradigm, DoD contractors over $7 million are publicly disclosed at 5 pm every business day.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defens...

[sbierwagen]

Why would someone pay money to use your crypto, rather than use one of the free algorithms that has been subject to decades of cryptanalysis?

[PaulHoule]

This is not just snark -- what is your unique selling proposition?