Events:
2021-08-20: NIST said that input to the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Project is due 2021-10-31
2021-10-25: internal NIST document listed the following “IP issues” for Kyber: “CNRS patent, Jintai’s?” (i.e.: GAM patent, Ding patent)
2022-03-02: internal draft of NIST selection report said that NIST is standardizing Kyber; said that “ISARA, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and Dr. Jintai Ding” owned “patents that may have potentially impacted some of the lattice-based KEM algorithms”; said that NIST “has reached agreements that will provide worldwide royalty-free and nondiscriminatory licenses for implementing the standard”
2022-04-19: NIST said that “the delay is not due to technical considerations but is due to some legal and procedural steps that are taking more time than we anticipated”
2022-05-12: Yunlei Zhao said that “Kyber is covered by our patents (not only the two patents mentioned in the KCL proposal, but also more patent afterforwards)”; said that the patents are for “credit (not for economic reasons)”
2022-07-04: NIST announced standardization of Kyber; similar text to 2022-03-02 draft
2022-11-30: NIST said licenses had been signed with CNRS (GAM patent) and Ding; posted edited excerpts from licenses
Factual questions that have been raised and that don’t seem to be answered by the available documents:
Did NIST evaluate the Zhao patent claim regarding Kyber?
Why didn’t NIST post the complete signed licenses for the GAM and Ding patents? (There is a third-party claim that NIST has released “all of the information about the licenses that it can”, but this doesn’t seem to be substantiated.)