Lettuce Encrypt, Encrypt We Must: Hobby projects change name after Let's Encrypt fires off trademark complaints An open-source project for automating the installation of free Let's Encrypt certificates for websites built with Microsoft's ASP.NET Core framework was forced to change its name after a trademark complaint from the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). ISRG is nonprofit sponsored by numerous companies including the …
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I sort of get the logic of the "use it or lose it" copyright setup. If patents worked like this, we might have fewer patent trolls. What I don't get is: if someone like lettuce encrypt didn't want to smack around a hobby project, couldn't they just license the name usage for $1/year? That would allow for strict guardrails on usage (in this case, maybe ensuring verbiage on the hobby project differentiates the two) and still demonstrates that they're protecting their mark.
Not sure how many IP attorneys are in the commentariat...
If there does have to be a 'consideration' they could also permit usage for $1 per thousand years, or in perpetuity. I'm not sure whether trademark usage requires a consideration, as it's not a service, good or a title.
Trademark lawyers never seem to suggest that approach though. Anyone know why?
I don't believe there would be any requirement to have any financial payment in this case as it is more about the requirement to take action against unauthorised uses, however it would still require that they decide if a project is authorised or not.
If they grant a general license allowing anyone to use the trademark as long as they meet certain criteria then it would still probably allow them to take action against people not meeting that criteria, but what do you specify for the criteria? Come up with a list of criteria and I will give you an example of something that technically meets the criteria but isn't someone you want using your branding! That person now has a license that presumably will be difficult to revoke just because someone decided to change the wording used for newly issued licenses...
You could put in place an application process where projects can request permission to use the trademark, but you are going to want to do some amount of research in to every application before you risk granting them individualised specific permission to associate themselves as having been officially endorsed by you...
Easier just to tell people to use the name of the protocol they support rather than the name of a specific provider, especially if your organisation is supposed to be encouraging adoption of the standard rather than the use of your particular deployment.
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Certify The Web is the way to go if you're running a windows server. You just install it on the web server and tell it which website to generate a certificate for, then takes care of auto renewals. It's a full UI, none of that command line nonsense ;) They just added support for BuyPass Go, as well which is also free and has 180 day certificates.
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