The CA/Browser Forum’s IPR Policy governs Contributions by members of the Forum during the drafting and adoption process of Normative Requirements by a Working Group. A Contribution is any material “made verbally or in a tangible form of expression (including in electronic media) which is provided by a Participant in the process of developing a Draft Guideline for the purpose of incorporating such material into a Draft Guideline or a Final Guideline or Final Maintenance Guideline.” The term “Draft Guideline” includes ballots that are being considered for adoption by a Working Group as either a “Final Guideline” or a “Final Maintenance Guideline”.

When a ballot to amend an existing Final Guideline is adopted by a Working Group, that amendment is considered a Final Maintenance Guideline, and each of the above guideline documents, as amended, is then considered a “Final Guideline” of the CA/Browser Forum.

Each of the following documents is considered a “Final Guideline”:

EV TLS Certificate Guidelines

TLS Baseline Requirements

Network and Certificate System Security Requirements

Code Signing Baseline Requirements

S/MIME Baseline Requirements

Prior Versions

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy v. 1.3 (effective from 3 July 2018 to 31 May 2026)

Outdated CAB Forum Agreement for IPR Policy (historical)

CABF-IPR-Policy-v.1.2 (effective from 15 February 2016 to 2 July 2018)

Prior IPR_Policy_V1 (effective from 1-Aug-2012 to 14-Feb-2016)

Additional Information

Forum IPR Subcommittee

IPR Review Notices

IPR Exclusion Notices

Latest releases

Server Certificate Requirements
SC098: Process RFC 8657 CAA Parameters - Jun 16, 2026

Code Signing Requirements
v3.8 - Aug 5, 2024

What’s Changed CSC-25: Import EV Guidelines to CS Baseline Requirements by @dzacharo in https://github.com/cabforum/code-signing/pull/38 Full Changelog: https://github.com/cabforum/code-signing/compare/v3.7...v3.8

S/MIME Requirements
v1.0.15 - Ballot SMC017v2 - Jul 30, 2026

This ballot increases the minimum RSA key size for Root and Subordinate CA certificates in the S/MIME BRs from 2048 to 4096 bits for keys created after September 15, 2026, while retaining the 2048-bit minimum for Subscriber certificates. The ballot further requires that by September 15, 2027, CAs SHALL NOT issue Subscriber certificates from any Sub-CA whose RSA key modulus is less than 3072 bits, effectively sunsetting issuance from legacy 2048-bit Sub-CAs. The ballot also includes minor typographic corrections. This ballot is proposed by Martijn Katerbarg (Sectigo) and endorsed by Ben Wilson (Mozilla) and Stephen Davidson (DigiCert)

Network and Certificate System Security Requirements
Version 2.0.5 (Ballot NS-008) - Jul 9, 2025

IPR Policy

Current Version

Intellectual Property Rights Policy

IPR Policy Agreement

Patent Exclusion Notice Template

Related Documents

Explanatory

Prior Versions

Additional Information