Keep in mind: a lawyer tried to attack the crypto credibility of Whit Diffie!
Remember, that lawyer who attacked Diffie won the case! The jury decided that the Patent Office knew better than Whitfield Diffie about encryption and awarded millions to the guy who claimed to invent asymmetric transport cryptography in the 1990s.
Well, the jury decided on the facts that the lawyer presented, which were facts that Diffie could not deny. He was introduced by the defense as the "inventor of asymmetric key exchange". But the plaintiff simply pointed out that, since somebody at GCHQ had already invented it secretly, he was not the true inventor. Yet because the prior GCHQ invention was secret, it did not count as prior art, which was why the DH patent was still valid!
And here's the kicker: the defense was actually arguing that the plaintiff's invention had already been invented by DH and as such was invalid, and the plaintiff had already pointed out that DH's work was not published and hence could not invalidate their patent. Exactly like the GCHQ work did not invalidate DH's patent.
Given that the plaintiffs argument was "secret prior art does not invalidate patents", it probably wasn't the best idea for the defense to bring in living proof of one of the better known examples of the plaintiff's argument to support them.
Keep in mind: a lawyer tried to attack the crypto credibility of Whit Diffie!
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/newegg-trial-cryp...
For some reason patent attorneys wonder why so many of us programmers regard the legalese surreality around patents as a Kafkaesque morass.