The following statement was received May 3, 2000 From: David Jacobson IBM's IPR statement pertaining to MARS AES finalist Since incoporation of the NIST AES algorithm into IP security standards is under discussion in the ipsec working group and since concern has been expressed about the intellectual property rights associated with the AES candidate algorithms, it appears useful to bring to the IETF's attention the IPR statement that IBM has made about our MARS AES finalist. IBM has publically announced that as of January 18, 2000 we are making MARS available on a royalty free basis woldwide regardless of the AES outcome. David Jacobson