There are also others trying to cash in on this. StartSSL recently started a "Start Encrypt" product which is based on similar ideas.
IMHO we can't put them in the same basket.
Blatantly registering another companies name as your trademark, within the industry and for the direct product you are competing against is piss poor intimidation. What possible legitimate motive could they have to do this? none. In the best case, it is for the eponymous "defense" package, at worst it is for intimidation.
To me, it's closer to "Joe's Pizza," "Anna's Pizza", and "Arlington Pizza" all selling, well pizza. Could someone confuse Arlington Pizza and Anna's Pizza? Sure, especially if Anna's Pizza is in Arlington and the owner of Arlington Pizza is named Anna. Nevertheless, you can't trademark "<Adjective> Pizza"
> Nevertheless, you can't trademark "<Adjective> Pizza"
Yep, you totally can. Again, because originality has got nothing to do with trademarks:
Hot Pizza: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:i80...
Scratch Pizza: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:i80...
Match Pizza: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:i80...
Anytime Pizza: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:i80...
What I meant is that you can't use your trademark on "<Adjective> Pizza" to exclude anyone else from registering "<Different Adjective> Pizza" and competing with you [edit: under that mark].
Likelihood of confusion is the acid test for trademark infringement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement
Also, preventing others from competing with you is completely irrelevant to trademarks. That's more something like what patents do. As far as trademarks go, you can compete all you want, just make sure you don't portray yourself as having the same name as your competitor.
Also with very cheesy and bad grammar.
If that is the case, then its a good thing (IMHO)
The web site had a black banner with white text on the top that stated in high contrast that it was the developer site and no actual transactions would run and tickets could not be purchased if a transaction was attempted here. (even was using a test domain while clearly the live site's domain was in the header)
They still required us to purchase some package to use the certificates on that site. When LE came up we were more then thrilled that we didn't have to fork out extra cash for developing on sites that don't get traffic at all and clearly stated this fact.
I will never go back to StartCom considering how they treated us that day.
It seems more like to that the approval process is strictly to whomever is approving requests at the time because I've also seen several friends get certificates for e-commerce sites that were clearly labeled as the production server and have yet to be revoked after several years of running and becoming successful.
I don't know how StartCom run's the actual process and I could have just been caught on a bad person that day but honestly when you have one bad experience humans tend to avoid going through that again since we are programmed since birth to do this. Of course Let's Encrypt has been more then what we expected and will continue to use them until such time we are required to stop using them!
Go Let's Encrypt - You got this companies support and I'm sure that of many others so don't ever stop fighting!
Badly. We've used their service for five years in clear and constant violation of their ToS, and apart from demanding a one-time hush payment they didn't even pretend care.
StartSSL even changed their CI colours from "green, with red highlights" to "exactly the same shade of blue Let's Encrypt has, with green highlights", I mean come on.