The company applied for a patent on SecureZIP, a method of combining Zip with strong encryption, earlier this year.
The move is being made to squash concerns that the Zip standard may become fragmented by differing implementations of encryption. PKWare does it one way, while WinZip Computing Inc, the market leader, does it another way.
PKWare used RSA Security Inc’s BSAFE toolkit to add AES encryption to its PKZip format in February. WinZip used a freeware implementation of AES to add encryption to the beta of WinZip 9.0 in May.
It is understood that PKWare has approached rival vendors about the free license deal as the company believes interoperability is in everyone’s interests, although the question remains on how PKWare can offer a license on a patent not yet granted, and which may not be granted.
The vast majority of Zip files exchanged each day are unencrypted, and therefore still compatible. It is only the files that are zipped and encrypted with PKZip that are not compatible with WinZip, and vice versa.
PKZip is made for every major operating system in use today, whereas WinZip is available for Windows machines only. PKWare says it needs up to nine months after implementing new features in its products before it publishes its new specs.
This article was based on material originally published by ComputerWire.
