Re: CA certificates

[Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org>]

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>:

> There's an interesting question.  Is a public key copyrightable?  In other
> words, does VeriSign have any legal grounds to restrict use of their
> public keys at all?

They might do in some jurisdictions, but I would guess that in most
they don't. The public key is a fact, like a telephone number or map
coordindates. A collection of such facts might be covered by the
European Database Directive, but a single such fact or very small
number of them ... I doubt it ... though I don't know, of course.
IANAL.