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Comment by egeozcan | Hacker News Reader

I see "Start Encrypt" as a capitalist answer to a competing product with (very) cheesy marketing, while what Comodo tries to do is purely malicious.

IMHO we can't put them in the same basket.

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I agree. There is a difference between using "encrypt" in the title of a product thats core functionality is encryption and the main name of their company; "start". If they modeled most of the marketing and branding on Let's Encrypt, it wouldn't be great but I could understand it.

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.

It sounds similar enough to me "Let's Encrypt" that it could confuse people. The trademark system is supposed to prevent confusion, which seems to me like what "Start Encrypt" could do. Thus, that also seems to me like a trademark problem.

You may be right (I'm not well-versed in the trademark system), but at least we can agree that this is a more complicated matter than what Comodo is doing. I mean, there is no plausibility in Comodo's case - just plain evil.

I tend to disagree (on the latter point). Encrypt is a generic word here. I don't think it's appropriate (nor consistent with the law) to grant broad trademark protection for generic terms.

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"

"Encrypt" on its own is generic but the "<Imperative-Verb> Encrypt" form of it doesn't sound generic enough to me. Trademarks don't have to be original to be trademarkable, just not cause confusion. I can see people getting confused by "start encrypt" vs "let's encrypt". There could be a case for trademark confusion there.

> 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...

Absolutely correct that you can trademark those phrases. I thought one thing and typed completely another. My mistake.

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].

Depends on the adjective. If "Hot Pizza" is granted (it seems to just be an application), which I doubt because that does sound really generic, then probably nobody will be granted "Warm Pizza" or "Sizzling Pizza" because that sounds similar enough to cause confusion.

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.

"Let's encrypt" is more subjunctive than imperative, although the distinction is vague in English. "Start Encrypt" is just bad grammar AFAICT.

> I see "Start Encrypt" as a capitalist answer to a competing product with (very) cheesy marketing

Also with very cheesy and bad grammar.

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