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Comodo Attempting to Register 'Let's Encrypt' Trademarks, And That's Not Right (letsencrypt.org)
Let's Encrypt is a nonprofit aimed at encrypting the entire web. It provides free certificates, and its service is backed by EFF, Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai and others. Despite it being around for years, security firm Comodo, which as of 2015, was the largest issuer of SSL certificates with a 33.6% market share on 6.6% of all web domains, last year in October filed for the trademark Let's Encrypt. The team at Let's Encrypt wrote in a blog post today that they have asked Comodo to abandon its "Let's Encrypt" applications, directly but it has refused to do so. The blog post adds: We've forged relationships with millions of websites and users under the name Let's Encrypt, furthering our mission to make encryption free, easy, and accessible to everyone. We've also worked hard to build our unique identity within the community and to make that identity a reliable indicator of quality. We take it very seriously when we see the potential for our users to be confused, or worse, the potential for a third party to damage the trust our users have placed in us by intentionally creating such confusion. By attempting to register trademarks for our name, Comodo is actively attempting to do just that. Update: 06/23 22:25 GMT by M :Comodo CEO has addressed the issue on company's forum (screenshot).
Well, for one, they don't have to to be the owner of it. In the US, it's first to use, not first to register. It's pretty clear they have been using it well before this application was submitted - an application that says it's not in use by that company yet. I'd love to hope that the trademark office will just reject it, but they'll probably drag this out.
PrivDog, Chomodo, hacks, and issuing certs to malware, Comodo is one company I'd steer clear from in any case.
That "burden" can be as onerous as having a lawyer write a letter, which it sounds like they had to do anyway. If Comodo went ahead with using their mark after receiving said letter, they would then be in the exact situation they are in now -- only they would have legal standing to enforce their mark, which presently they don't.
"Nonprofit" shouldn't mean you can't afford to pay for basic necessities like registering your business license, paying your fire insurance, and protecting your most basic and fundamental IP (your name).
Breakfast served all day!
Who is authorized to certify the Certification Authorities, and what would it take to finally have Comodo's cert revoked?
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
They're most likely just trying to prevent Let's Encrypt from entering the commercial arena of issuing TLS certificates by creating legal barriers. Let's Encrypt's popularity is soaring and they're quickly capturing the low-end markets with minimal trust and identification requirements. They might see a possibility that Let's Encrypt might some day become a big player and thus a major competitor to COMODO.
-SR
How is it that they haven't had their issuer's license revoked already? They've already been found wanting as a cert provider, since they seem to have no qualms about issuing fraudulent certificates.
And now they're trying to fraudulently use someone else's trademark?
How much more fraud will they be allowed to perform before someone gives them a serious slap?
Oh, wait, what am I thinking... This is the US. As long as their shareholders are happy they could rape, pillage and burn entire towns and no one would care.