4 ms·

Wait, did you co-opt the term "Medicare" to use for your project? (medicare.dev) I'm not so sure the government would like that name.

by mfkp 5y ago

arionhardison 5y ago
Because I am "literally" trying to recreate a better version of medicare and Medicaid. Those terms are not trademarked. If you look at Medicare.gov and Medicare.com you can see, the term is actually used a ton and the gov does not care. They care much more about bad-faith actors. One of the main benefits is I don't have to tell "regular" people what I am trying to do. This is my "moon-shot project so even if it was an issue I would not change it just to cause a big fuss and get the press from it. The bigger issue was using all of the state HHS logos, but they don't really care about that either. In preparation for my big launch I needed to test the "do they care" theory so I literally did 2 press releases. 1 targeted directly at the D.C. area and one nationally, every contact they have made with me has been a positive interaction. https://www.kpvi.com/news/national_news/award-winning-programmer-and-software-engineer-arion-hardison-building-medicare-for-all-health-management-system/article_37ae0100-b0dc-53dd-8b55-3390219a13ae.html https://www.kpvi.com/news/national_news/award-winning-progra... I paid for someone to handle this for me, really embarrassed by the title but in their defense I have won 7 health hackathons; much of that work inspired what I am doing here. Ideally I get to a point where my systems are so much better than theres that I can promote services from .dev to .gov, I really have not thought that far ahead but I would love to discuss.
- mfkp 5y ago
  I'm not a trademark lawyer so take this as you will, but the term Medicare has been trademarked since 1957, assigned to the Executive Director of the US Army. https://trademarks.justia.com/890/00/medicare-89000008.html https://trademarks.justia.com/890/00/medicare-89000008.html Just because you haven't run into a trademark issue yet doesn't mean that you will not in the future. And I don't think I'd want to be fighting the US Army lawyers for the naming rights. I love your initiative, but you may want to look into the naming issue a bit further (since this is what trademarks are explicitly designed for, to prevent confusion about one product/service doing the same thing under the same name).
  - arionhardison 5y ago
    So, from what I was told. It has to be shown with the actual extension. For example https://medicare.com/ https://medicare.com/ This i why I use medicare.dev and medicaid.dev and NEVER just use the naked terms. This is also what I have seen everywhere else, can you point me in the right direction on this? I really appreciate the input.
    - mfkp 5y ago
      I'll send you an email shortly with some details.

Wait, did you co-opt the term "Medicare" to use for your project? (medicare.dev) I'm not so sure the government would like that name.

by mfkp 5y ago

Wait, did you co-opt the term "Medicare" to use for your project? (medicare.dev) I'm not so sure the government would like that name.

arionhardison 5y ago

Because I am "literally" trying to recreate a better version of medicare and Medicaid. Those terms are not trademarked. If you look at Medicare.gov and Medicare.com you can see, the term is actually used a ton and the gov does not care. They care much more about bad-faith actors. One of the main benefits is I don't have to tell "regular" people what I am trying to do. This is my "moon-shot project so even if it was an issue I would not change it just to cause a big fuss and get the press from it. The bigger issue was using all of the state HHS logos, but they don't really care about that either. In preparation for my big launch I needed to test the "do they care" theory so I literally did 2 press releases. 1 targeted directly at the D.C. area and one nationally, every contact they have made with me has been a positive interaction. https://www.kpvi.com/news/national_news/award-winning-programmer-and-software-engineer-arion-hardison-building-medicare-for-all-health-management-system/article_37ae0100-b0dc-53dd-8b55-3390219a13ae.html https://www.kpvi.com/news/national_news/award-winning-progra... I paid for someone to handle this for me, really embarrassed by the title but in their defense I have won 7 health hackathons; much of that work inspired what I am doing here. Ideally I get to a point where my systems are so much better than theres that I can promote services from .dev to .gov, I really have not thought that far ahead but I would love to discuss.

mfkp 5y ago
I'm not a trademark lawyer so take this as you will, but the term Medicare has been trademarked since 1957, assigned to the Executive Director of the US Army. https://trademarks.justia.com/890/00/medicare-89000008.html https://trademarks.justia.com/890/00/medicare-89000008.html Just because you haven't run into a trademark issue yet doesn't mean that you will not in the future. And I don't think I'd want to be fighting the US Army lawyers for the naming rights. I love your initiative, but you may want to look into the naming issue a bit further (since this is what trademarks are explicitly designed for, to prevent confusion about one product/service doing the same thing under the same name).
- arionhardison 5y ago
  So, from what I was told. It has to be shown with the actual extension. For example https://medicare.com/ https://medicare.com/ This i why I use medicare.dev and medicaid.dev and NEVER just use the naked terms. This is also what I have seen everywhere else, can you point me in the right direction on this? I really appreciate the input.
  - mfkp 5y ago
    I'll send you an email shortly with some details.