Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications
forums.comodo.com
forums.comodo.com
https://forums.comodo.com/general-discussion-off-topic-anyth...
Most CEO's hide behind the PR department, or speak only one-way, without replies.
He actually tries to justify (or deflect) stealing the Let's Encrypt trademark by claiming LE stole the concept of a 90-day cycle. Ridiculous.
You can patent business methods, but saying a 90-day cycle is an "inventive concept" would likely cause a competent attorney to take you to one side and quietly convince you to not point that fifty-caliber BMG at your leg.
Comodo might or might have innovated a 90-day free trial. But let's say for a moment that Comodo did invent the 90-day free SSL trial. The intent is for the promotional purpose of purchasing paid products. LE has no paid tiers, and the primary motivation is to help the internet get encrypted, not to sell certificates. What's ridiculous isn't the idea that a 90-day cycle got "stolen", but that the Comodo CEO persistently thought of ISRG as a business competitor when they are not even in business. (No one is fighting you, dude).
What I don't get is why so many people kept playing into that erroneous assumption of his instead of calling him on it.
As they should when they're so divorced from reality that they provide the justifications that this guy has. Open dialog is nice, but it doesn't mean much when the underlying message is that of hostility.
If this is any reflection on his mental state and processes Comodo is dead.
Either someone who doesn't know the law trying to look smart, or someone who does know the law trying to bullshit their way into being able to own more than the union of copyright law, patent law, and trademark law actually allow them to own. Believe it or not, the law doesn't recognize "It's mine because I scream loudly enough" as a valid concept.
To me this sounds quite similar to the ownership of the rectangle with rounded corners (I am actually not sure whose side I'm on in either dispute).
It's even sillier than that. Comodo has long offered a 90 day free trial cert. You have to pay to renew.
Let's Encrypt gives a 90 day free cert that's freely renewable as many times as you want along with an API to renew it. These aren't the same business models at all.
What I don't get is why the CEO of Comodo, all the people on the thread all seem to assume Let's Encrypt has a business model, and that they are a competitor. The Comodo CEO seemed to keep coming back to that point, taking all of this personally. There is no business model to steal from Comodo because Let's Encrypt is not a business. And people kept responding and upholding that assumption?
Can someone give me a sanity check here on my logic? Am I the only person who sees this?
[1] https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/what-is-the-business-mod...
I think Comodo was crazy here, but I can totally understand why they see Let's Encrypt as a threat.
Also, by your argument, why would any CA allow the ISRG to use their certificates to sign free certificates? In the article I linked, there was a good argument made that creating a free SSL cert creates or enhances the market for more expensive certificates. There's a path open.
Nonprofits need business models too.
If by "business model" you mean, "how do we keep the lights going", that's fair. However, that's not the primary mission of Let's Encrypt.
That was roughly my read. While "business" is frequently used as a synonym for "for profit company", that's not the only definition. Someone saying "that's none of your business" is unlikely to be talking about S corps.
> However, that's not the primary mission of Let's Encrypt.
It's the means by which they accomplish their primary mission. Can't encrypt the world if you can't keep your servers on.
The point Comodo guy is trying to make is they invented/own the 90-day certificate, or specifically the magic number 90. If they actually do he has the moral right to be upset (but of course that doesn't mean trademark law or common sense stop being applicable to the words "Let's encrypt")
Seriously? Even the US patent office would balk at an application to patent 90-day trials or 90-day certificates. Also, Let's Encrypt isn't doing trials, so patenting the first wouldn't even make sense.
Um, it doesn't really say anything about most CEOs, does it?
Actually, I think it shows how this guy is different from others, because he seems more nutty than most people.
>grammer
>fund
This is intentional right?
That being said, it sounds like the cause of the omissions of just the words of the first-person constructions this post uses is more likely to be rooted in English being Melih's second language.
See the weird omission of reference to self? Here's something I didn't originally intend to share... The reason I notice this is because I used to type emails like that. I don't know why I used to do that, but I eventually stopped doing it consciously because I thought it sounded weird, and years later noticed it in the situation I mentioned earlier. I find it annoying these days to read people doing it. I totally get what you're saying about ESL, but I'm referring to it happening outside of non-native English speakers. I'm interested in your initial suggestion, though. Thanks!
[0] https://entrepreneurs.maqtoob.com/my-cofounder-said-i-love-w...
"Success four flights thursday morning all against twenty one mile wind started from Level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty one miles longest 57 seconds inform Press home Christmas"
I sometimes omit first-person pronouns and some other words when writing text messages, because I find it considerably more difficult to type there. The charitable interpretation I would give is that, if someone writes emails like this, either they're writing on an inconvenient mobile platform now, or they're used to writing on such a platform and write that way even with a proper keyboard.
I'm guessing, in this case, that this is just an ESL thing.
I can't even imagine what he was thinking when he was saying this. Well, I can imagine dissonance, but not on the level from where this comes. It's literally insane, given it's business, and software business at that.
Looks like it works. :D
-- Paul Christoforo, while being crushed by the internet hate machine.
> With LE now being an operational business, we were never going to take the these trademark applications any further. Josh posted a link to the application and as of February 8th it was already in a state where it will lapse.
> Josh was wrong when he said we’d “refused to abandon our applications”. We just hadn’t told LE we would leave them to lapse.
> We have now communicated this to LE.
On LE's blog post, they mention that they have repeatedly asked Comodo to abandon the applications since March 2016. If Comodo was going to let the applications lapse as they claim, why not communicate this at the earliest opportunity?
To me this is a dodgy answer at best. I am not so familiar with trademark law, but I don't believe that an application "being in a state where it will lapse" is in any way disarmed - it is my impression that Comodo could simply have opted to continue the process, but is pretending that they wouldn't have in order to avoid bad press.
Further, the last time I read through things about trademarks, my understanding is that they don't work the way some of the people posting say it does. Trademarks are influenced by whether it is a distinguishing mark or not. You can lose trademark protection if it comes into common use. Once registered, you have to keep defending it as a distinguishing mark. So I'm not sure where the "paralegal" in that forum thread is coming up with the argument that it somehow works like a "first-to-file" -- the person who possesses the paperwork possesses the right.
Maybe my understanding is incorrect. If it isn't off though, I can see their lawyers saying, Comodo really doesn't have much of a case (but it'd still eat up a lot of time and resources a small non-profit won't have).
Poor internal communication between the people talking with Comodo and the decisionmakers? Not wanting to give the time of day to the competition, lest they avoiding wasting their time and resources? Deferring committing to the decision until the last moment, in case they change their mind? I can buy it.
> it is my impression that Comodo could simply have opted to continue the process, but is pretending that they wouldn't have in order to avoid bad press.
Based on my (non-lawyer) understanding, a trademark application sounds very much like "not a trademark", and an application that Comodo would eventually lose thanks to clear and conflicting objections from the people actually using the term. I don't think they could've continued indefinitely. I think they would have eventually dropped the process, if only through inaction by allowing the application to expire. I can buy that they were at the point where they were planning internally to drop the process.
Not out of any noble reasons, mind you - they'd have dropped it earlier, I think, if those were the cause. Filing in the first place may have been an act of bad faith. It's just not in Comodo's best interests to not fight a loosing battle to the point that it looses them the war, so to speak. Although it might be a bit late for that.
Translation: Thank you LE team for sending the seething rage of internet masses after us. We surrender.
The 90 day expiry is a bit of a faff, but we've mostly automated it using acme.sh and automated DNS edits, and now we just need load balancer access (we just moved to new hosts). LE is a godsend and fully up to commercial use in our experience.
After this, there is no way on earth we're giving Comodo money again. I would rather pay Thawte than these bozos.
Comodo certs have two possible chains. If you want to be supported by older Android (and older iOS) devices, you needed to configure your server to hand out the longer of the chains. When you buy a cert, this is not the chain they will recommend.
This is easy under Linux if you can find the right certs, a huge PITA if you're on IIS.
They do an incredibly poor job of documenting this or informing their support on how to address it.
Do you know a writeup anywhere of the cert chain issue? (I ask for idle amusement, no way we're going back to them.)
Oh, and when I say "fully up to commercial use", we plan to use LE certs for our dev instances too (so we're SSL at all stages of development).
If you find yourself landing at a root CA which is newer and not trusted by as many devices, those devices won't intelligently realise it's cross-signed, unless you switch the certs the server offers to send them up that path.
"Update, June 24 2016
We have confirmed that Comodo submitted Requests for Express Abandonment for all three trademark registration applications in question. We’re happy to see this positive step towards resolution, and will continue to monitor the requests as they make their way through the system.
We’d like to thank our community for their support."
People immediately realized how much of a terrible company Comodo is and the negative feedback had to have poured in.
Beside abusing the legal system, there is something else called right and wrong by common sense. A CEO does not get that really should try a different job.
Melih's arguing on that thread has reached the level of trollbait.
They clearly wanted to put them out of business because they see them as a competitor!
Does anyone know a good free alternative to their Comodo Internet Security product? I know there are plenty of free AV products, but I also use its firewall and HIPS features, especially detailed logging.