blog.jameshom.com

STC Seattle Conference Thoughts, Part 2

One thing that was kind of disturbing, although it didn't really hit me until later, was ComponentOne's use of "NetHelp" to describe their Web-based online help functionality in the new Doc2Help:

I talked to the vendor rep at the conference expo, and he said I was the first person to ask about it. I guess I'm the only person who remembers the original NetHelp, or cares about it. It was my baby after all.

I'm pretty sure we did a trademark search when we started using the "NetHelp moniker though. Back then, most Netscape products were coming out as "Live", but somehow "LiveHelp" didn't really sound right to us. Can you imagine JavaScript being known as "LiveScript"? Almost happened, ya know.

"NetHelp" leveraged the Netscape brand, which was smokin' hot at the time (1997). I guess we didn't bother trademarking it, and even if we did, would AOL care nowadays? Probably not.

But now that I'm back in the Tech Pubs industry, it's a bit sad to see the name being used by someone else for essentially the same thing. It's one thing to see your company domain get snapped up by a link chaser (to wit: www.collabra.com). It's another to see the name get usurped.

Posted by jameshom at May 13, 2005 02:22 PM | TrackBack