Utilizing algorithms in academic papers

Question

I'm unclear about legal status of utilizing an algorithm from a published academic paper. Is there an implicit patent over that material? How about open source applications? Would it be ok to implement that algorithm in an open source app, with one of free software licenses?

Let's say I have access to paper A which describes algorithm B. How can I determine if I can use algorithm B in my commercial closed-source app C or open source app D? Is the answer always "no"? Is there an expiration date?

Answer 1

There's no such thing as an "implicit patent".

Unfortunately, I'd think you need to evaluate the IP restrictions for each paper.

One of the more famous situations where the algorithm described in an academic paper was ultimately encumbered by a patent as the RSA asymmetric encryption algorithm. A paper, "On digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems", was published in an ACM journal in 1977 describing the algorithm, a patent was awarded in 1983 (US Patent 4,405,829).

I have not read the paper, so I don't know if the application for a patent was mentioned - I do know that the algorithm was rather widely implemented, then when the patent was awarded MIT/RSADSI started enforcing it. The patent became a rather big issue with PGP, for example. MIT/RSADSI ultimately permitted free use of the patent for non-commercial use, I believe. A similar situation occurred with the LZW compression.