[hn_throwaway_99]

NIST is going the proper route to ensure that any standards they publish can be freely implemented without implementers having to pay patent royalties. That's the reason for your second quote - if KYBER patent holders don't want to agree, they should know that NIST won't choose them for the standard.

[nullc]

Just to clarify: My understanding is that the authors of Kyber aren't the patent holders in question-- rather a third party has patents which may read on Kyber and several other of the NIST finalists.

It's really unfortunate the the licensing terms weren't announced at the same time: Depending on how they're written the result may still be unattractive to use, and since they've already announced the selection NIST probably just lost some amount of negotiating leverage.

(As the obvious negotiation would be "agree to these terms we find reasonable, or we just select NTRU prime")