Not knowing what Watsi was, this is ridiculous. Finding out they're an organization that gets donations for medical treatments, being threatened by an insurance company? Beyond ridiculous.
An Early Retirement
11–20 of 76 posts
Re: An Early Retirement
#12When you say "invited to a bonfire at Ocean Beach", that doesn't mean you're going to burn a big heap of branded trash on the beach, right? Or am I just being a spoil-sport?
Re: An Early Retirement
#13Title had me worried for a moment! The whole team wanted shirts, so we loaded up -- we're going to wear that blue contraband with pride.
Same here. Ordered one and will wear it with pride.
Re: An Early Retirement
#14I remember when looking for a new company domain feeling like this SNL comedy skit: http://vimeo.com/82393638
Medical companies are ruthless here. I ran an e-commerce store that sold medical equipment, it was nearly impossible to buy any .com domain name related to the medical industry. We ended up settling with JazzMed because one of our founders liked Jazz and we figured it was a unique brand. We ran the company for about 6 months slowly getting to a point where we had roughly 10 orders a day. Needless to say, once we started ranking well in Google a health care company called Jazz Pharmaceuticals threatened legal action, even went through the trouble of sending a certified letter from their lawyer. After reviewing our options and after receiving a formal complaint to the court from the company we decided to shut down and comply with their demands which was to transfer the domain ownership to them. We just didn't have the resources to hire a lawyer and keep the company going. The sad part is that there are so many businesses in that space it's nearly impossible to create a company name that doesn't sound like an existing one.
Re: An Early Retirement
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assumed the same company as you. However, I fall on the other side of the analysis, that Watsi is 1. not interfering with any trademarks registered by BCBS (all BCBS registered marks, which I found in TESS, are word/design marks, which means the blue cross on its own is not protected, it is only protected when it is accompanied by the word mark); and 2. otherwise not causing any confusion in the markplace (for exam…
> all BCBS registered marks, which I found in TESS, are word/design marks, which means the blue cross on its own is not protected, it is only protected when it is accompanied by the word mark As I noted in my post, though, marks don't have to be registered in order to be protected. Even if BCBS doesn't have any instances of the blue cross alone registered with the USPTO[0], that doesn't mean that BCBS couldn't still…
>TESS (the USPTO database search) sucks.
100% agree with you. A story I have told a few times on HN was getting a C&D letter for the use of the mark "blood" on a previous product I manufactured, and a basic search on TESS of "blood" will not turn up the registered mark (turns up a lot of other marks that include blood, but not blood by itself) I can only find it searching the registration number. Watsi is being classy by not even naming the company, but I would like to see the C&D or demand letter they received.
Re: An Early Retirement
#16Wow, this really made my evening :)
I just donated two hours worth of my consulting time for two fellow human beings in need somewhere else in the world and it will have serious impact. I'm in total bliss The only thing I would like to see watsi doing is to offer donations with bitcoin! Integration with bitpay is really easy too. If watsi is rails based (seems so) they would have support for bitpay out of the box with active merchant!
Go spread some love folks, it feels great!
Edit:
https://bitpay.com (they offer immediate conversion to local currencies too!)
https://github.com/Shopify/active_merchant/tree/13e0ab52727b...
Re: An Early Retirement
#17I'm assuming the company in question is Blue Cross Blue Shield. This kind of sucks, but looking at their logo[0], I would have to agree that they're uncomfortably close, if they are deemed to be in similar enough markets. The only question is whether Watsi and BCBS operate within similar enough markets for their use to be considered infringement - I'm less sure of that. On a related note, this is why early-stage star…
I disagree with the recommendation on not filing for trademark registration. Sure, actually finalize your branding first. But once you do, the filing is comparatively cheap (a few hundred bucks total), and provides remedies against copycats that common law trademarks don't have. Even a letter based on a registered trademark is often enough to get people to change behavior. This is actually a case in point.
[In general. I am not YOUR lawyer.]
Re: An Early Retirement
#18Not knowing what Watsi was, this is ridiculous. Finding out they're an organization that gets donations for medical treatments, being threatened by an insurance company? Beyond ridiculous.
In America healthcare is a serious, for-profit business! Heaven forbid that bluecross(I'm assuming) loses revenue to Watsi.
Re: An Early Retirement
#19I'm guessing part of the agreement is that Watsi doesn't publicly "out" the insurance company. Well, we have lots of good writers here, some with an audience, but without any legal association to Watsi.
Let's make this so costly that no mega-corporation dares to bully non-profits in this way again.
Re: An Early Retirement
#20I hope they aren't planning on changing it to red. I remember in 2005, the Red Cross was going after video game companies that used a red cross on their health/medpack items in-game.
A green cross also has other meanings :)