Ambulance company adopts new name to avoid confusion

Michelle Swafford

Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005 | 10:59 a.m.

Southwest Ambulance -- Las Vegas is changing its name to eliminate confusion with an Arizona company that it has been fighting in a trademark infringement battle.

Starting today, the ambulance company will be known as MedicWest Ambulance Inc. and will retain its flag and emblem logo on the ambulances with the new name.

The company's new name was created from multiple employee suggestions and was approved by the majority of the workers.

"The employees are energized," MedicWest spokeswoman Cathy Hayes said. "It's kind of a perk and a shot in the arm. After five years you can get complacent."

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was scheduled for this morning to unveil the new name on the company's 44 ambulances. It also is a celebration of the company's new headquarters and training center for paramedics and emergency medical technicians that opened last year in North Las Vegas.

The company has been busy switching the name on all of its business items including 5,000 patches on company uniforms, Hayes said.

MedicWest is in contract negotiations with Clark County, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas so the company thought now was a good time to change the name, Hayes said. The negotiations are likely to be completed by the end of October, she said.

The name was changed for multiple reasons including an ongoing dispute in Phoenix with Rural/Metro Corp. in Scottsdale, Ariz., which owns the trademark name and operates a subsidiary called Southwest Ambulance, among other reasons, Hayes said.

"We had some trademark disagreements with Southwest Ambulance in Arizona," Hayes said. "We just decided to go ahead and change the name because it's unique."

"We decided to change names separately," she said of the lawsuit.

The trademark lawsuit was filed March 2005 by Rural/Metro Corp. and accused Southwest Ambulance -- Las Vegas and its affiliated companies of violating the trademark license agreement that allows the local company to use Southwest Ambulance within Nevada.

Southwest Ambulance -- Las Vegas denied that it violated the agreement with Rural/Metro.

Hayes said using Southwest Ambulance in the company name was confusing to potential employees during the recruiting process and was another reason for the name change.

"We've done a lot of recruiting within the industry from around the country," she said.

The company is applying to trademark MedicWest to prevent another dispute, Hayes said.

Southwest Ambulance entered the Las Vegas market in 2000 with 44 employees and five ambulances. Today, it has 269 employees, 44 ambulances and responds to about 230 calls each day in Clark County, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas. It only responds to nonemergencies in Henderson.

Bob Ramsey, who is an investor in Southwest Ambulance -- Las Vegas, started Southwest Ambulance in Phoenix in 1982. Ramsey sold the company and its federal trademark to Rural/Metro in 1997.

In August 2000, Southwest Ambulance LLC, which was owned by Ramsey and Pat Cantelme, bought Rural/Metro's minority interest in Southwest Ambulance of Nevada Inc. and signed an agreement to use the Southwest Ambulance name for Nevada business purposes.

Ramsey, Cantelme, Sharon Henry and John Wilson own the North Las Vegas company that is now MedicWest.

Rural/Metro alleges that Southwest Ambulance -- Las Vegas has used the trademarked name outside of Nevada in its contracting, advertising and recruitment efforts. Southwest Ambulance -- Las Vegas denied the allegations and filed a counter lawsuit.

The parties are now negotiating privately.