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ANTONY SCHOLEFIELD IT’ S taken seven years, a team of high-cost lawyers and numerous court dates but the verdict is in: Primary Health Care cannot legally trademark the words‘ Primary Health Care’.
The GP corporate wanted to protect its name amid fears that doctors and the public may confuse it with other organisations that use the words in their branding.
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In 2010, it prosecuted the Australian General Practice Network, whose members had been branding themselves as primary health care organisations.
Four years later, the Federal Government— in the process of setting up its primary health networks— blocked Primary from registering the trademark.
Now, after a prolonged legal battle, the Federal
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Court has ruled against Primary, noting that the phrase‘ primary health care’ has been around a long time.
The court’ s 50,000-word judgement makes clear that this historical fact was lost on Henry Bateman, Primary’ s one-time general manager, who apparently did not realise the phrase related to anything other than the company founded by his father, Dr Ed Bateman.
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The younger Bateman told the court he used Collins, Macquarie and Oxford dictionaries to look up‘ primary health care’, but found nothing there. His research left Federal Court judge Anna Katzmann unimpressed, however.
“ The term‘ health check’ does not appear in the dictionary,” she wrote in her judgement.“ Nor, for that matter, does‘ ham sandwich
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’. Each term, however, has an ordinary meaning.
“ Despite the professed ignorance of his son, the evidence indicated that the name was chosen by the applicant’ s founder, Dr Edmund Bateman, because it reflected the services that would be available to patients attending the centres,” she added.
Mr Bateman left the company in 2016.
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Mr Bateman tried to trademark‘ primary health care’. |
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In Brief |
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Staff writers |