Uversa's ClearHealth Trademark - Part One
We have run into an interesting situation regarding our recent installation of ClearHealth at a local clinic. As mentioned previously, ClearHealth is a GPL software product that was originally a fork of OpenEMR. After the initial version, a lot of the code was rewritten, and was re-released as ClearHealth, a trademark that Uversa aims to enforce.We would like to tell our customers that we can install, support, and customize ClearHealth (a GPL product) and it would be nice to put the product on sales literature. But it doesn't appear that this is likely to be possible.
According to the CEO, David Uhlman, the trademarked name, ClearHealth, cannot be used outside of the fair use clause, without written permission. Written permission appears to require joining their reseller program (whereby Uversa would work with us, and we would work directly with the client), or they would work directly with the customer (we would basically provide leads for Uversa). His comments can be seen in his reply at their forums. The other option that they offer is to rename or fork the product.
Fred Trotter did just that, providing a "friendly fork" of the ClearHealth product as MirrorMed. Of course, since the original version of ClearHealth was an OpenEMR fork, one could say that they are at least eating their own dog food (promoting what they themselves did).
I'm not sure of the "right" way to handle trademark issues surrounding an Open Source project. Obviously, twenty companies should not offer different products under the same name. This would cause confusion among users of the project. However, the trademark concerns seem contradictory to the spirit of the GPL. Basically, for other commercial entities to benefit from the community, the trademark owner has to get paid. This certainly would reduce the likelihood of code contributions from the "other" commercial entities.
What are your thoughts on the GPL and trademarks?
Should the rules differ in the medical community?
2 Comments:
This is, of course, an important issue to me. When I originally created MirrorMed, I intended it to have much more friendly use than the ClearHealth mark.
However in order for a trademark to be valid, the owner of that trademark must take steps to ensure that the quality of the product remains high. I have not yet determined how to do this. My current attempts include some loose rules for how to use the MirrorMed and FreeB names. But this is a work in progress, I will probably be changing the rules very soon.
So far, several companies have added themselves to the list of companies that support MirrorMed and I am considering what it means to be an "approved vendor" as opposed to an "unapproved vendor".
Despite my attempts to be more friendly with the trademark terms, no one except SynSeer (my company) has made a serious commitment to the MirrorMed project. If you guys are interested in working with the name and the project then I might reconsider, but at this point it seems that Uversa may have the strategy right...
-Fred Trotter
I actually think they couldn't have it more wrong, to tell you the truth. What they are doing with the trademark virtually ensures that no one, except hobbyist's, will contribute to their Open Source project.
Of course, the only hobbyist's that they want are going to be those with domain knowledge, which means a Doc ... with knowledge of EMR and billing systems. But, my guess would be that there are few of those who want to contribute to Open Source, knowing that they cannot then say anything about that product in their Commercial literature.
I wish them well, however, I think it's about the polar opposite of what should be done.
My guess is that a company like SugarCRM actually has it done properly. They have two sets of guidelines governing the usage of their trademark, including "Community" icons, and then "approved" vendor icons. The rules are different for each, but anyone providing commercial support can use the SugarCRM Community icons, mostly at-will.
Apache's Tomcat has even a better Open Source license for usage of their Trademark. Basically, if you use it, you have to call it "Apache Tomcat", for the first reference on the page, and you cannot call your own product "Apache Tomcat".
Considering that both products have HUGE followings, and HUGE after-markets, I'd say that they have it right, not Uversa.
As for your list of companies that support MirrorMed, I'm glad to hear that you have several. You may want to check some of those URL's, as at least three of those companies no longer exist.
I'm not sure if we are interested in pursuing the ongoing support of ClearHealth / MirrorMed, or not. The more we dig, the less we like the code, and the more bugs we find ... and the more inflexibilities we are discovering in the code base.
I realize you had a lot to do with writing the code base, so I won't bash it -- there's a lot there. But I'd say that it easily breaks about 5 of items on my top 10 "do not do this, ever" list.
For instance, I really think that if the software seriously catches on, that there will be a huge after-market of products that do reporting, properly.
For now, ClearHealth / MirrorMed are easily the best Open Source EMR package available. Who knows what the future will bring....
-Anthony Presley
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