The Webinar Blog

Still A Bit Of Life Left In Raindance

Last month I published an entry in which I was cynical about InterCall's devotion to its acquired Raindance web conferencing product. In fairness, I should report that I recently received an email announcing an update release of Raindance Seminar Edition. The new release should be available right at the end of January.

According to the email, "Raindance Seminar Edition's new and enhanced features include:

• Leader and participant surveys - create separate post-event surveys that can be send to co-moderators and presenters or participants.
• Maximum number of registrations - end registration once a specified number of registrants has been reached.
• Force client type - force attendees to join your event using either the full or light version of Raindance Seminar Edition.
• Copy of participant emails - request a copy of all participant emails be sent to you so you can see what information is being provided about your event."

Good for the Raindance crew! I'm glad to see there's still a product management, support, and programming team getting upgrades out the door. That makes me much more comfortable about continuing to use the software.

They are also going to offer an enhancement overview training session online. It doesn't seem to be on their list of upcoming events yet.

Technorati Tags: InterCall, Raindance, web conference, web conferencing, webinar

The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

Yugma is a new entrant in the web collaboration space. It is a rebrand of Let'sPowwow (and let's be honest... that name wasn't ever going to fly if they wanted to sell into the corporate market). The marketing team at Yugma faces a stiff challenge in getting visibility and mindshare when there are so many vendors already established in that space. Especially the 800-pound gorilla, WebEx.

Hmmm... WebEx seems to be well known. They spend a lot on marketing. I wonder if there is a way to leverage that? What's their logo again? Oh yes, a sphere divided into blue and green sections:

Hey, I've got a great idea for our new logo! How about a sphere divided into blue and green sections:

Done!

:)

Technorati Tags: LetsPowwow, logo design, WebEx, yugma

Trademark Controversy Followup

A good story never dies. I picked up on a podcast by KRM, talking about the trademark status of the word "webinar." Conferencing News picked up on my article and urged action by all interested parties to oppose Learn.com's filing for a new trademark on the word, as well as providing more detailed information about the registration filing. (By the way, if you've ever sent out an email invitation or posted a banner ad or issued a press release talking about an upcoming webinar... you are an interested party!).

To be honest, I was rather dismissive of the whole idea of trademarking the word at this point. It just seems impossible, given the ubiquitous unchallenged use of the term by hundreds of different parties. But Conferencing News points out that logic has never been a surefire determinant in government agency decisions.

Our combined efforts couldn't possibly have spurred additional government action this fast, so I'm going to have to label it a coincidence in timing that the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO for short) issued a second refusal letter to Learn.com this very evening at 7:56:01 PM (somebody's working late!). They say that webinar as defined by Learn.com "is merely descriptive" and can't be trademarked as a proprietary term for their unique offerings.

While I was reading the initial letter of refusal from December 28, I was amused to see that one of the side issues the agency cited as requiring amendment was that "The wording 'web conferencing services' is indefinite and must be clarified as audio and/or video teleconferencing and classified in International Class 38." I managed to find the Nice Agreement International Classification Of Goods And Services they were referring to. Class 38 deals with telecommunications. While there are subcategories ("Indication of Goods") dealing with communications by computer terminals, apparently the PTO won't yet recognize web conferencing as a uniquely labeled type of communication. You either do audio teleconferencing or video teleconferencing (or a combination of the two). This should please the Conferencing News guys, who have been waging a battle against the vendors proclaiming "telepresence" to be something separate from videoconferencing. Those vendors are going to have a tough time selling their point of view to the PTO!

Technorati Tags: Conferencing News, KRM, teleconferencing, trademark, webinar

Legal Status Of "Webinar"

KRM Information Services posted a short podcast last November in which they interviewed Tony Bourget (their corporate research attorney) about the legal protection accorded the coined term "webinar." It's a fun but occasionally frustrating listen.

As with most issues in the confusing world of patent and trademark protection, the expert was unable to offer much in the way of absolute answers to the interviewer's questions (it might just be me projecting, but I felt like the poor interviewer was getting more and more exasperated as the interview went on and he couldn't get a simple yes or no to anything out of his subject expert!).

Tony pointed out some interesting facts about the legal status of "webinar." An individual did indeed register the mark back in 1990 (Wait a minute... That seems way too early. I just looked up the registration and it says the filing date was 1998, which is more reasonable, especially since the official registration grant is in 2000) -- but only as a design/style trademark registration. That means the specific printed depiction of the word in its unique format is protected, as you would a logo. In this case, apparently the first three letters are capitalized. The unnamed registrant assigned the ownership of the mark to InterCall and I have to tell you that I was unsuccessful in finding any mention or depiction of it on their website.

You would think that lets everybody else off the hook, but there is a clause in trademark law that protects a registered mark from a competing mark that could be construed as misleading or confusing with the protected mark. What constitutes "confusing" is completely up to the courts however, so an attorney can't give you any absolutes on whether you are safe or not. The economics of legal practice argue in favor of fuzzily worded statutes that require paid services to settle (Oops... Is my bias showing?)

It turns out that we are right at the end of any grace period for the owner of the trademark registration to refile ownership and show use. I rather doubt that InterCall would bother at this point. As Tony points out, there is such widespread use of the word (without any precedent of challenge) that it would probably be easy to label it as public domain.

In fact the word "webinar" has been (over)used to the point where it made it onto the annual Lake Superior State University List of Banished Words in 2005. It is in the esteemed company of such stalwarts as "blog" and "wardrobe malfunction." I wouldn't try prosecuting ownership of any of these.

Strangely though, Tony makes reference to someone who filed in August of 2006 for registration of "webinar" as a general word mark without regard to font or style in conjunction with a variety of web conferencing services. Although my company is Webinar Success and I use the term in my logo, I didn't bother to try for ownership, so don't look at me!

KRM talked about revisiting this subject in mid January and I hope they do. If so, you now have the background on the basic facts. Now get out there and advertise more webinars! Don't forget to use WebEventSearch.com. It's still free and still a great way to let people find your online events.

Technorati Tags: KRM, trademark, WebEventSearch, webinar, Webinar Success

Microsoft Live Meeting Patch Confusion

One of my friends working at a large enterprise forwarded an email to me this week. From the context, it seems to have originated with Microsoft and is being distributed by the internal account administrator to employees around the company who use Live Meeting on a regular basis (I don't have the origination info, so treat this as an educated guess). The note reads:

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I wanted to also let you know that an issue has been identified with Live Meeting regarding compatibility with Office 2007 and Vista Operating System. They are requiring all Presenters and Attendees to download a hot fix on to their systems to rectify the problem.

It will upgrade their Live Meeting console to the latest version and they will not experience the issue.

This fix should be installed regardless of what operating system or Office suite the user is running because the issue has been linked to components of Office 2007 that have been copied into Power Point 2003 presentations.

Here are the instructions that need to be included in the confirmation materials that are sent out to your registrants, and to any Presenters using Live Meeting:

ALL attendees must install Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005 Service Pack 7 (SP7) prior to joining a Live Meeting event. SP7 updates your system to the latest version of Live Meeting. It also ensures compatibility with Office 2007 and Widows Vista presentations being shown in Live Meeting.

To install Office Live Meeting 2005 - Service Pack 7, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=8BB36446-1465-4F52-B820-433B7ECDA7D6&displaylang=en

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At first glance, that all seems straightforward enough. But on closer inspection, several things struck me as exceptional. I'm comfortable with (not pleased, but accepting of) the regrettable fact that a major new complex operating system upgrade might require patches for existing applications written for an earlier system. So I can understand Vista users having to load a hot fix for Live Meeting. It's rather nasty that the patch won't detect and load automatically for affected users, but we'll let that slide for the moment.

I find it utterly confounding however that even users who have successfully run the application on their existing Windows systems in the past have to manually download and install a patch because "components of Office 2007" may have "been copied into Power Point 2003 presentations." Huh?

Now we come to verbiage you are supposed to send out to your prospective webinar attendees. They MUST install Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005 Service Pack 7 (SP7) prior to joining an event. Wow. Talk about instantly reducing the attendance to a general outbound mass marketing event. Most people who might have casually granted you their time to hear a message are not going to jump that hurdle.

But let's assume your audience members go ahead and click through to the link. They are presented with an informational page entitled "Live Meeting 2005 Meeting Console Hotfix for Windows Vista." Nowhere on the page does it mention the words "Service Pack" or "SP7." The brief description and overview both state that the patch is designed for computers running the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. A cautious XP user (the supported operating systems on the info page are Windows Server 2003, Vista, and XP... I don't know what an old Windows ME or Win95 user is supposed to do) would certainly choose not to download this patch.

By this point, I was intrigued. So I started searching through the Microsoft site for information on Live Meeting Service Pack 7. I couldn't find anything in a general search of the Microsoft corporate site. In the support knowledge base, I got only one hit. Answer number 1215 for "Live Meeting 2005 Interoperability With Vista" states that the console update is needed for users already running the Live Meeting 2005 Service Pack 7 version of the console. Weird. So it looks like the download mentioned in the email is not SP7 itself, but a fix to SP7! And I can't find any documentation that says what SP7 was designed to fix in Live Meeting, nor how to get it. And there is still nothing indicating that users of non-Vista operating systems need to comply.

So at this point I'm stymied. I don't know whether the forwarded email is some kind of weird hoax (doubtful, since it links through to a legitimate Microsoft download site), is based on faulty information or understanding of a problem, or is correct and contains additional information contradictory to and unavailable on the Microsoft product support site.

I sent a request to Microsoft Support for help on the matter and I haven't heard back yet. In the meantime, I'd be very interested to hear if any of my readers who use Live Meeting got a similar notification in their companies. In any case, I'll update this entry should I get any new information or clarification.

Technorati Tags: Hotfix, Live Meeting, Microsoft, Placeware, Vista, web conferencing, webinar, Windows Vista