Are SHA-1, SHA-2 patented?

Question

Do you need a license to use SHA-1 or SHA-2 for commercial purposes?

Answer 1

It was originally created by the NSA For secure DSA Encryptions and then adopted by NIST to maintain all aspects of the algorithm Along with SHA(2 and 3).

This is an free to use, "as is" algorithm and is widely used by the DSA Encryptions

heres the RFC on the system.

http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip180-1.htm

Answer 2

Neither SHA-1 or SHA-2 is patented or covered by any intellectual property of that kind. You can use them freely for any purpose. The NIST (which is the US federal institution which standardized SHA-1 and SHA-2) is actually running an open competition for the selection of the next standard hash function (provisionally dubbed "SHA-3") and an explicit requirement for candidates is that in the event they are ultimately selected, then they must be stripped of any patent or copyright or whatever. SHA-3 will be as freely usable as SHA-1 and SHA-2 are.