Criss Angel MindFreak and Logos
While I was pondering the
GPL and trademark issues, I noticed that the
A&E channel was running
Criss Angel MindFreak episodes back-to-back. He's a very interesting character, and the show is equally as entertaining.
However, during my trips to Vegas (where most of the show is taped), I always see people walking around in branded t-shirts and jackets. After watching three episodes I noticed that the audience members is always wearing blank t-shirts and jackets. No brands, what-so-ever.
Coincidence .... canned show, or not?
Uversa's ClearHealth Trademark - Part Two
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.
We have contributed code and man hours to
Sequoia, a project from
Continuent, and to
OSWorkflow, a project from
OpenSymphony. Both companies are similar to
Uversa, in that they offer consulting and development services in addition to the Open Source products. Interestingly enough, both groups / companies have significant Open Source and Internet presence, but
OpenSymphony and
Continuent don't really have any trademark issues. In fact, I would hazard to say that both of those projects are more popular than
ClearHealth.
Searching for
ClearHealth on Google:
44,500 results.
Searching for
Uversa ClearHealth on Google:
590 results.
Searching for
Sequoia on Google:
8,550,000 results.
Searching for
Continuent Sequoia on Google:
114,000 results.
Searching for
OSWorkflow on Google:
179,000 results.
Searching for
OpenSymphony OSWorkflow on Google:
112,000 results.
We have not made a decision as to which route we are going to take. We can fork or rename the project, or we can become a
Uversa reseller.
I can certainly appreciate their desire to protect their trademark. Of course, as we continue to modify the
codebase, and move further away from the code that they wrote, we will want to use an identifiable name and do not want to be forced to pay someone to use our own code.
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?
cVent.com Customer Survey
On Friday I ended up on a
Webinar with
cVent, a Customer Survey company. One of our clients wanted to know if their product could assist them in taking customer surveys. An hour and a half later, I had my answer.
Their product, one of the most expensive on the market, does almost nothing that a product like
SurveyMonkey.com or
Zoomerang.com can do. They do, however, have a very clean interface.
I did find one of the slides very humorous, where
cVent showed off that they had 2,000+ customers. I believe
Zoomerang's home page says 800,000+ customers.
Information Week Targets Health Care
This week's
Information Week is laying Health Care on the line. Specifically, the articles discuss what large employers (
Walmart and
Intel) are doing to try and drive down the costs of health care, and also profiles a few clinics and hospitals about their fight to implement EMR's.
[
If you have not been keeping up with the CCHIT debates, and what many perceive as governmental regulations of EMR systems, then please look here, here, here, and here.]
MediSoft is the Most Purchased Product Ever?
Medisoft, a Physician Management product which is both cheap and easy to use, was purchased by
McKesson (publicly traded as
MCK) earlier this month.
The purchase was a $1.8 billion deal, and would be mostly insignificant news if this was the first time Medisoft had been bought or sold.
However, prior to McKesson owning Medisoft, it was owned by PerSe (publicly traded as
PSTI). In fact,
PerSe has not owned Medisoft for a full year yet (they acquired them on Jan 6, 2006), and also produces a competitive product (
Lytec).
Prior to the PerSe acquisition, Medisoft was owned by NDCHealth. NDCHealth acquired Medisoft in 2000, from yet another company. [Note: McKesson is actually acquiring the entire PerSe company, including both Medisoft and Lytec.]
Apparently their acquisitions are occuring so fast, that the employees claim they're not done being
absorbed from the last acquisition! I'm not sure what the future holds for either product, but I certainly would be somewhat concerned about the product's future.
Advertising Blurb: If you're not happy with your Medisoft or Lytec products, or their future, feel free to contact us and see what Resolution Software can do for you.
