Comodo Drops Trademark Applications, Avoiding Legal Battle with Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt
Comodo has withdrawn applications for three trademarks involving the term “Let’s Encrypt” – a move that seems to be related to a plea by an open certificate authority of the same name urging Comodo to abandon its applications.
Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority by the non-profit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). Comodo’s Requests for Express Abandonment came with 24 hours of a blog post by the Let’s Encrypt project on Thursday last week, but it is unclear if the two are directly related.
The Let’s Encrypt project said in a blog post that it contacted Comodo regarding the trademark applications in March, and asked directly and through attorneys for Comodo to drop its applications, saying it is “the first and senior user” of the term.
Comodo filed trademarks for the terms “Let’s Encrypt,” “Let’s Encrypt with Comodo,” and “Comodo Let’s Encrypt” for certificate authority or related services. The company acknowledges in its applications that these phrases have not been part of its branding before they were filed in October.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) responded to Comodo’s application in February, asking for clarification of “identification and classification of goods and services.”
“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,” ISRG executive director Josh Aas said in the blog post. “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.”
The Let’s Encrypt project was announced in November 2014, and it issued over a million SSL/TLS certificates in its first three months after launching late last year.
The organization argued it is most commonly associated with the term and has been using it longer, and will “vigorously defend” its brand.
Comodo did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Source: TheWHIR