Free at Last, Free at Last — “Health 2.0″ is Free at Last!

Bravo, cheers and congratulations to fellow blogger and consultant Matthew Holt.  In a stroke of defiance and brilliance, he has trademarked the term “Health 2.0” and made it available for all to use (presumably except for events that might be confused with his upcoming Health 2.0 conference).  From The Health Care Blog:

Yes I’ve trademarked Health2.0. No, I will not stop anyone using it. I’ll be giving control over the trademark to the collective advisory board for the Health2.0 Conference. All I want to make sure is that no one uses the trademark offensively (pun intended) as for instance has happened with the term eRx.

Why did Matthew obtain the trademark for Health 2.0 only to give it back to all of us?

Matthew describes his indignation in receiving a cease and desist letter for his use of the term “eRx” on his blog, which he presumed was in the public domain.  The letter came from attorney Swindler, representing a company called eRx Network.

Matthew’s approach is remarkably similar to that used by The Nature Conservancy.  The Nature Conservancy uses land acquisition as a principal tool of its conservation efforts — they buy land parcels to protect and preserve them. The Conservancy helps to protect approximately 15 million acres in the United States. Their approach is a wonderful blend of conservative, free-market thinking combined with liberal environmentalism.

I’m empathetic with Matthew’s indignation because I, too, have received a cease and desist letter while using a term that I assumed was in the public domain.  Here’s my story.

My cease and desist letter came several years ago from Nebo Systems, which has a federal trademark on the term “ecare”. 

What kind of a dad names their company “Nebo”?  Nebo is a name that you change from, not to.  I expect that poor Nebo will be spending $20,000 on the therapists couch one day wondering “Why did my parents name me Nebo?  did they hate me?”  Anyway, I digress.

The early days of eHealth started with a widely used “3 C” framework to describe the landscape — content, connectivity, commerce — and the terms became e-content, e-connectivity, and e-commerce. After a while the analysts realized that there was a 4^th “C”—– care.  I won’t say the corresponding “e” term for fear of the trademark police descending on my property, but you get the point.

At the time, I was calling my newsletter “e-Care Management News”, which invoked a cease and desist letter from Nebo’s attorneys. I changed the name to “e-CareManagement” (combining it all into 1 word), and the dogs stopped barking.

My legal knowledge is a little rusty here, so I invite anyone who is more current to clarify.  I’m a lawyer by training and have been paying my “inactive” dues to the California Bar for the past 25 years in the event that I might wake up one morning feeling that I’m missing my true calling; that hasn’t happened so far.  My recollection is that owners of trademarks must actively defend their trademarks, or risk losing the trademark.

I have to wonder if Nebo is keeping up here in defending its trademark.  A search of Google this morning comes with a count of 1,270,000 hits for the term “e-care”.  These Nebo guys have a lot of cease and desist letters to write.

In all seriousness, congratulations to Matthew.  Are there any losers here?  Well, seeing the bandwagon effect forming, my dry cleaners had been considering sponsoring their own Health 2.0 conference.  I guess they’ll have to rethink that one.