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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday June 26 2016, @01:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the certifiable-behavior dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Comodo, the world's biggest issuer of browser-trusted digital certificates for websites, has come under fire for registering trademarks containing the words "let's encrypt," a phrase that just happens to be the name of a nonprofit project that provides certificates for free.

In a blog post, a Let's Encrypt senior official said Comodo has filed applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office for at least three such trademarks, including "Let's Encrypt," "Let's Encrypt with Comodo," and "Comodo Let's Encrypt." Over the past few months, the non-profit has repeatedly asked Comodo to abandon the applications, and Comodo has declined. Let's Encrypt, which is the public face of the Internet Security Research Group, said it has been using the name since November 2014.

In an update to the original article posted on Friday, Comodo surrendered all claims to the trademarks with the following statement from CTO Robin Alden:

Comodo has filed for express abandonment of the trademark applications at this time instead of waiting and allowing them to lapse. Following collaboration between Let's Encrypt and Comodo, the trademark issue is now resolved and behind us and we'd like to thank the Let's Encrypt team for helping to bring it to a resolution.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/800-pound-comodo-tries-to-trademark-upstart-rivals-lets-encrypt-name/


Original Submission

Related Stories

StartCom Launches a New Service - StartEncrypt 27 comments

I am the user of StartCom's (https://startssl.com) free SSL certificate service. This is the content of the email they send me a couple of days ago:

[Ed. Note: Could not independently verify the e-mail; found substantially the same announcement on StartCom's web site; that copy appears here. It seems that English is not their native language, so I would ask we keep the discussion to the technology.]

Eilat, Israel - 6th June. 2016.

StartCom, a leading global Certificate Authority (CA) and provider of trusted identity and authentication services, is pleased to announces a new service – StartEncrypt, an automatic SSL certificate issuance and installation software for your web server.

StartEncrypt is based on the StartAPI system which allows to obtain and install SSL server certificates into your web server for free and automatically; no previous knowledge is required, everything is done with just one click.

StartEncrypt supports Windows and Linux server for most popular web server software, and has many advantages such as:
(1) Obtaining AND installation of the SSL certificates automatically;
(2) Support for Extended Validated (Green Bar) and Organization validated certificates;
(3) Supported validation periods up to 39 months, more than 1180 days;
(4) Support for multiple hostname with up to 120 domains including wildcard support;
(5) All levels support free issuance of certificates, just make sure your StartSSL account is verified as Class 3 or Class 4 identity.

StartEncrypt together with StartSSL will allow you to secure your websites without any prior knowledge including extended and organization validations which provide the confidence your online customer needs in order to increase to online revenue. Let's Start to Encrypt now.

We recently covered 800-Pound Comodo Tries to Trademark Upstart Rival's "Let's Encrypt" Name and have had many stories on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's efforts with Let's Encrypt.

[Disclaimer: SoylentNews is exploring the use of a cert from Let'sEncrypt on our development/test site.


Original Submission

Let's Encrypt Won its Comodo Trademark Battle - but Now Fan Tools Must Rename 47 comments

Popular Bash shell script LetsEncrypt.sh, which is used to manage free SSL/TLS certificates from the Let's Encrypt project, has renamed this week to avoid a trademark row. This comes in the wake of Let's Encrypt successfully fending off Comodo, which tried to cynically snatch "Let's Encrypt" for itself.

LetsEncrypt.sh, written by Germany-based Lukas Schauer, is now known as Dehydrated. If you have scripts or apps that rely on pulling in his code and running it, they may stop working as a result of the name change. Dehydrated is developed independently by Schauer and is not officially affiliated with Let's Encrypt.

"This project was renamed from letsencrypt.sh because the original name was violating Let's Encrypt's trademark policy. I know that this results in quite a lot of installations failing but I didn't have a choice," reads the new Dehydrated README.

[...] Full disclosure: This article's author uses Let's Encrypt to provide HTTPS encryption for his personal websites. And you should use it too.

Our Previous Story: 800-Pound Comodo Tries to Trademark Upstart Rival's "Let's Encrypt" Name


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @01:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @01:23PM (#366016)

    Following collaboration between Let's Encrypt and Comodo, the trademark issue is now resolved and behind us and we'd like to thank the Let's Encrypt team for helping to bring it to a resolution.

    Why do I feel like vomiting?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @02:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @02:59PM (#366047)

      Because the press release was written by an adult.

    • (Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday June 26 2016, @03:40PM

      by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Sunday June 26 2016, @03:40PM (#366062)

      You read too much of it at once. Next time try taking it in smaller portions, maybe 5-6 word at a time, so you won't be as likely to get nauseous.

      --
      "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Sunday June 26 2016, @01:30PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Sunday June 26 2016, @01:30PM (#366018)

    Personally, I think the punishment for this sort of abuse should be loss of all their trademarks and transfer of all their patents to the public domain.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @11:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @11:24PM (#366251)

      I would have thought all major browsers dropping them as a trusted CA root would have been more appropriate, since they've shown themselves untrustworthy and willing to masquerade as an entity that they are not. Would make for some enjoyable Internet drama to watch as well, as they try to make amends or excuses when users start getting unexpected security warnings.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2016, @08:04AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2016, @08:04AM (#366364)

        They can't even be arsed to drop the root certificate that was used to sign an intermediate root certificate for a company that makes MITM devices.

        Until that root certificate is dropped, HTTPS and SSL is officially compromised. Do browser makers even care anymore?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2016, @06:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2016, @06:47PM (#366545)

        good idea. we need to lobby the browser makers for this.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday June 26 2016, @02:43PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Sunday June 26 2016, @02:43PM (#366039) Homepage

    If you don't know your American idioms, the "800-pound" thing and the photo of a gorilla on the article are going to be very confusing.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday June 26 2016, @02:47PM

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Sunday June 26 2016, @02:47PM (#366042) Homepage

      Also, that's a photo of a pretty genteel-looking gorilla. I'd have gone for this handsome fella [pinimg.com].

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @03:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @03:09PM (#366050)

      I know the idiom, and the picture still made it confusing: is it about a real gorilla?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @04:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @04:33PM (#366075)

      That gorilla used to weigh 600 lbs, but the suburban American lifestyle is taking its toll.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @10:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @10:46PM (#366236)

        You got it wrong [huffingtonpost.com], asshole.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @06:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @06:01PM (#366108)

      but how many kg is that?

      • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday June 26 2016, @08:03PM

        by wonkey_monkey (279) on Sunday June 26 2016, @08:03PM (#366170) Homepage

        And is it a mountain or a lowland gorilla?

        --
        systemd is Roko's Basilisk
        • (Score: 1) by redneckmother on Monday June 27 2016, @04:30AM

          by redneckmother (3597) on Monday June 27 2016, @04:30AM (#366322)

          Dunno, but now we know where the coconuts came from...

          --
          Mas cerveza por favor.
    • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Sunday June 26 2016, @09:55PM

      by inertnet (4071) on Sunday June 26 2016, @09:55PM (#366210) Journal

      I thought TFS was about an 800 pound Komodo Dragon: https://www.google.com/search?q=komodo+dragon [google.com]

  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday June 26 2016, @03:14PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Sunday June 26 2016, @03:14PM (#366053) Homepage

    800-Pound Comodo Tries to Trademark Upstart Rival's "Let's Encrypt" Name

    Oh no! That's-

    Comodo has filed for express abandonment of the trademark applications at this time

    Oh, never mind.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @04:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @04:45PM (#366079)

      Two utterly pointless nit-picks about the same story submission.
      That OCD is really acting up. Are you stressed out? Have you had a bad week?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @04:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2016, @04:23PM (#366072)

    Is it Open Office or Office Open XML or Open Office XML that's the good one? The default says is OO, let's use that.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday June 27 2016, @02:31PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Monday June 27 2016, @02:31PM (#366437)

      Yes, the point of naming OOXML was to confuse people who wanted Open Office. Why are you bringing this up?

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Sunday June 26 2016, @11:14PM

    by ledow (5567) on Sunday June 26 2016, @11:14PM (#366247) Homepage

    "Shit, they caught onto us before we could get it registered, get preference on domain names, software and search engines, and steal the thunder from this project that's giving away the thing we're trying to sell."