WFP: Sharing is the nice thing to do.
You know, I’ve grappled about what to write about tonight. I was going to give you a lovely completed garden plan with lists of delectable varieties of heirloom plants I’m going to grow this year… but no. That will have to come next week. I promise a lovely garden update- one that will inspire and fill your mind with visions. But tonight, I’m compelled to share about a recent controversy- one which I have pretty strong opinions about.
I’ve long been inspired by the works of the Dervaes family in California. They live on a 1/5 of an acre, half of which is cultivated land, and they’ve actually carved out a little living for themselves in the middle of their city. They grow the majority of their food and sell veggies to local restaurants. They raise chickens, goats, ducks, etc. You should check them out- they really have great ideas. Undoubtedly they have done a lot to benefit this movement, and I’ve been really inspired by them over the past few years. However, today I read all about this controversy regarding their recent trademarking of the phrases "Urban Homestead" and "Urban Homesteading". Apparently they’ve been sending out letters to small businesses, bloggers, libraries, you name it, to stop using those terms without proper credit.
Seriously.
I am an urban homesteader. That’s just what I’ve been doing. I’m homesteading in an urban area… I have lots of friends who are urban homesteaders- it’s a way of life. But NOW, we have to be URBAN HOMESTEADERS® (this term is a protected trademark of Dervaes Institute). Are you kidding me? I was somewhat outraged at first- but I’ve loved following these guys and thought I’d do a little investigating. I went to their website, and much to my dismay, there it was outlined in their "FAQs" section.
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"Why do you own registered trademarks–particularly "Urban Homestead" and "Urban Homesteading" when you are against corporations?
We filed our trademarks for the purpose of maintaining standards and for the protection of the term and concept. We are still in this society that is ruled by laws and governments and, sometimes, you have to use those rules to protect the freedom of an idea before it’s too late.
We began to see the terms "Urban Homestead" and "Urban Homesteading" used as "green-washed bandwagon" terms solely for profit — even mentioned in an glossy magazine advertisement of a car. It bothered us to see the terms being used for ideas that no longer reflected the down to earth roots.
The final straw came in an email we received. It was from the owner of a small business who created a product and named his little business with a great sounding title. Guess what? Big corporations thought it was a great sounding title as well and trademarked it and told him, he could no longer use the name he came up with.
In addition, more and more people began to use the term for profit and the public / media started to confuse our project with that of the others. It was a matter of survival — trademarks keep the little people from being overwhelmed.
So, as the popularity of Urban Homestead and Urban Homesteading increased and began to label everything from television productions to big agriculture products, we couldn’t shake the warning bells in our minds. The establishment of Urban Homestead and Urban Homesteading needed to be protected so we can all move forward as a movement.
But I want to write about my urban homestead — can I not use or refer to "Urban Homesteading" or "Urban Homestead" in my blog?
If you aren’t using it to make money and are simply documenting your life or sharing your information, this would only require that you update your websites and articles to properly cite our works and properly acknowledge if used.
When using these trademarked terms, the proper way to go about it is as follows:
Proper trademark usage should include the proper trademark notice [®], and note in close proximity that the term is a protected trademark of Dervaes Institute or link to the site.
URBAN HOMESTEAD®
URBAN HOMESTEADING®
That’s it! If you want to label a for-profit endeavor with the term, we ask that you contact us first.
Thank you in advance for respecting our legally protected intellectual property rights. If you have been supportive of our ten-year online work in the past, we appreciate very much your continued support."
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For real. I can’t even believe it. People started to get outraged all over facebook (the thread to which has been since deleted). I made a comment about the situation (which seemed to be spurred because a woman’s facebook page for her business was deleted because of this). I wrote that I felt disappointed about their motivation to protect the term from corporate misuse- anyone that knows what we’re doing will know the difference between the real revolution and one that is trademarked and copyrighted and used for profit. I mean, all this serves to do is to alienate us from each other. This really doesn’t sit right with me- especially because it was said in the thread that they sent a letter to a local library about the use of the term in a workshop they gave on the subject. I mean, how is this protecting us? Furthermore- it’s actually not their intellectual property. I mean, I guess legally it is, but in reality it’s a term to describe a real thing- not a new concept. There are loads of people who have been doing this and using that term long before it was coined by this family. Ugh. I’m just outraged. This is entirely contrary to the spirit of this revolution. For what it’s worth, I highly resent their attempt at sparing us this same drama with a corporation. The corporation would be just as wrong. I honestly don’t care if it’s all legal, it’s still a bunch of bullshit, if you look at the reality. I really hope that they gracefully return to a place that we can all respect. Unfortunately, this was the article they posted on their blog about it after they deleted the spirited thread on FB. It’s a copy of the letter they send out, and it’s not incredibly comforting.
This is why we must focus on sharing our knowledge and our love of the earth. Really sharing. We need to focus not on ourselves, not on what we’re doing and who sees it… we need to focus on real health, real restoration, real connection. This issue I’ve talked about, this issue is just a waste of our time. What about the real issue at hand? What about our precious home, our home that is in severe trouble? We need real food, we need more urban homesteaders, we need more folks who are willing to speak up and say what needs to be said without nit-picking about supposed intellectual property. This about our lives, our future.
Ugh, that’s all I can think to say on the matter. What do you think?
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“If your use of one of these phrases is not to specifically identify products or services from the Dervaes Institute, then it would be proper to use generic terms to replace the registered trademark you are using. For example, when discussing general homesteading or other people’s projects, they should be referred to using terms such as ‘modern homesteading,’ ‘urban sustainability projects,’ or similar descriptions.”
The problem I have with this is “urban homesteading” IS a general descriptive phrase. What are you doing? Homesteading. Where is it? In an urban area. Blah. Grrr… I cannot believe those people. Grrrr.
exactly what she said! i may as well trademark “gardening”. if you’re not talking about my garden, you’re going to have to refer to it as “growing things in your yard”, because gardening(TM) is now my trademarked term!
that’s ridiculous…
http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/2011/02/17/who-owns-these-trademarks/
This was actually an attempt to defend themselves, and in my mind it makes them all the more ridiculous. Can you believe that “Gardener” is on that list?! The next blog post they make is actually about plagiarism- they even define the term. Such condescension, it’s hard to have any sympathy for them.
wow!!! so i’m supposed to look on the bright side of this, and say, ‘well, at least they didn’t trademark ‘bicycle”?!?!
Hahaha- seriously. It’s sad that all their attempts to quell the storm have just made us more angry.
not that this makes any difference, in the overall theme of this post, but i was thinking about this on my way in to work today, and it occurred to me that ‘bicycle’ is probably a trademark of the playing card company, not some moron who tried to trademark the concept of a bike… i looked it up and found a wikipedia article:
Bicycle Playing Cards are a popular brand of standard playing cards, and are the USPCC’s original brand and product. Since 1885, the Bicycle brand has been manufactured by the United States Printing Company, which, in 1894, became the United States Playing Card Company of Cincinnati. “Bicycle” is a trademark of that company.
so i feel no better about the urban homesteader trademark, but i do feel better knowing that some cycling enthusiast wasn’t as over-the-top as the urban homesteaders are!
What’s really bizarre is that they actually put a post up with a list of other trademarked terms, as if to say “Hey, see! There’s other people who trademark stuff like this!” Everything they’ve written has just dug them a deeper hole. It’s pretty sad actually. I included a link below in response to stupidfool. I think a bigger problem is that trademarks like this actually get approved. I mean, “honeybees” is on the list. And “bicycle”. It’s crazy.
I can’t quite understand how some of those got approved.
But, in regards to their defensive question as to whether people object to the other trademarks, I think: some of those were probably trademarked before the books were published (like Locavore). Moreover, I haven’t yet heard of people’s blogs getting sent “cease and desist” letters by people for misusing those terms. If I hear of people being challenged for their blogs using those words, then I’d be just as ticked off.
In some ways I think the whole idea of trademarks is being challenged a bit by the internet. It used to be you could misused the terms as much as you want in conversations and in letters with people and no one knew because those were relatively private. Only the big publishers needed to be concerned about proper trademark use. But now suddenly everyone’s conversations, blogs and stuff are online and public. So do they have to be held the to the rules that applied to publishing or to conversations?
That is ridiculous! As others have stated, trademarking something like “urban homestead”, would be like a leftist group trademarking, “Power to the people!”. SO beyond the point. So ironic, in a sad way.
I say, ignore it. If everyone in the urban homestead community refused to abide by this ridiculous law, maybe something would come from it. I don’t know the answer, but I know that if someone told me I couldn’t use the phrase “power to the people”, I would use it all the more!
There’s some real basis to this argument. If nothing else, if everyone started using it the family would be bankrupt with lawsuits before they could win them all–and would eventually use their trademark.
Yes! And that’s exactly what’s happening. A facebook group is organizing a protest where all of us are supposed to blog using the terms all over the place on Monday. You’ll be sure to see something from me! 😉
I’m just tempted to do some m f ing squatting.
Do it, yo!
I am really surprised they were legally allowed to trademark the term considering that it has been in common usage for a number of years and a popular book was published with that term as the title years before they did.
Reading this post made me feel sick inside. I’m not a Protected by Trademark by any means. I’ve never gardened (yet! soon, I hope!. But this really really bothers me. It is like they took this idea that had so much benefit to the common good and decided to make it an individually owned commodity.
By doing that you risk destroying the idea. Instead of a natural growth of knowledge that comes out of community building and sharing, the usage is stifled and boxed in….and it dies from not being able to be free.
Just an aside…It is funny how you were describing in the other post about how difficult it is for little kids to share, and yet here are supposed community minded adults who don’t want to share words with others.
After seeing someone here in Germany register a trademark on the international breastfeeding symbol, and this registration not being challenged until it was too late, nothing surprises me anymore. :/
I know, right? They made a list, too, of other trademarked words that are just as absurd. I link to it above. Sad sad sad.
I was thinking about what would be the equivalent to this in other areas of life, and thought about someone trademarking “Attachment Parent” or “Birth Junkie” or something like that. Crazy!
That’s ridiculous and also really disappointing! I find it incredibly arrogant that they appear to think they can have ownership over a term which describes a movement that’s been around for years too. It suggests they see themselves as the experts and leaders who have nothing to learn from others and that they’re refusing to acknowledge that actually many people have been living such a lifestyle independently of them. Ugh 🙁
I’ve just checked out the site and was even more discouraged to see them justifying their actions by likening it to the trademarking of terms like Apple and Nike. Doesn’t that miss the point of the movement entirely?!
Really, so sad. I still can’t believe that they are unwavering, especially after people have been siting articles from the 70s and 80s that use the term, and there’s a book titled “The Urban Homestead” that was published 2 years before their trademark went through. Uuuuugh. It completely misses the point, you’re right. Someone on the facebook protest page wrote something like “Well, this is what you get when you try to trademark an anarchist movement…” Sort of funny, when you think about it.
They have been getting a lot of press coverage lately. I guess it’s just one small step from there to seeing yourself as the person who invented this whole thing (even if you know you’re not) and so having the right to lay claim to a phrase like that. It happens all the time with things that start out small and revolutionary. Sad. 🙁
Yeah, I actually hadn’t been to their site in a while and it’s definitely changed in appearance. It just kind of looks like they sold out a bit… Definitely something to think about guarding against in ourselves. I can’t see myself ever becoming like that, but I suppose we all could.
this is totally bogus. how can the whole ‘institute’ be so hypocritical?
they have only been URBAN HOMESTEADING® (haha) for ten years, what about the families that have done this for a couple of generations? (ie parents did it, children either move to their own space and continue or buy bigger with parents and continue – i know a couple of families like this and have read about others in passing.)
additionally, does the trademark only apply within the US? i live in england and my husband and I are hoping to do something like this on a smaller scale with our next property (we have no garden at the moment).
blah.
The trademark does in fact only apply in the US. Muahahaha.
I sincerely hope you go on to be a righteous urban homesteader and use the term proudly, as I will be. Glad to have you on the team! 🙂
i think they will loose alot of their fans about this. sad.
i’m not an urban homesteader but i totally agree with you. they are out for the big money which seems opposite to their mission. “URBAN HOMESTEADING®” looks ridiculous in print.
i can agree that they have the right to stop people from using it for personal or political profit but other than that i think its too much.
its like microsoft trying to trademark the word “windows”. talk about being like “the man”.
Oh, they seem a bit ruined at this point, especially because their attempts to set the rumors straight have only fanned the flame and been really condescending.
Doesn’t it look ridiculous?! It’s such a general term. I thought it would be like writing “I’m an ATTACHMENT PARENT ® ” or something. So silly!
I think trademarks are a very important part of our culture. :/
Ah, you… I definitely miss having coffee. Soon?
Me too. 🙂 February 28-March 4th is my winter break so if you have any free mornings that week, let me know.
Caveat: I’m coming at this from one section of one business management class.
The way I understood it was that copyrights and trademarks are the responsibility of the owner to enforce. There is some consequence to not enforcing it, however. If someone can prove that you knew about their misuse of your copyright/trademark and did nothing to enforce it, then you can lose the right to any compensation–and possibly even the trademark/copyright. What this means is that if they don’t do anything about KNOWN offenders, then when someone comes along who uses it “improperly” there’s nothing the CR/TM owners can do about it.
HOWEVER, that means that you can dictate how your trademarked slogan/name/whatever can be used. The use of the tags indicating copyrights, trademarks and registered trademarks are actually optional–although not requiring their use can make holding the trademark more difficult. If the group knows that the trademarked name is already being used improperly, then it’s in their best interests to be militant about it in every instance that someone can prove they knew about.
I can see the benefit of having someone protecting the name of the movement surrounding the lifestyle of creating homesteads in urban territory so it doesn’t get mis-used, especially if there is already evidence than it has been. But I think in my own case, I would turn a blind eye to those who are using it as I’ve defined it. I’d save my energy for those who are clearly abusing and mis-using the term.
Thanks for this comment and that perspective, it’s interesting. I still think they are full of shit. The fact is, the movement is about freeing people from an unsustainable way of life, and trademarks are just sort of contrary to the entire spirit of the thing- being that we’re all supposed to share a more sustainable way of life- not worry about getting sued if we don’t have the right little symbol next to a completely general term.
I can’t agree enough. My mind has come back to this issue over and over in the past couple of days, and I just can’t get how they justify it… ugh!
We can all protest in our own little way- signing petitions and staying on top of the news. Also not complying with the demands. I think the reason we’re all so upset is because it’s an entirely appropriate and general term to describe something that’s much more common than they seem to think. Say that we start calling it a “modern homestead” or “city farm” instead, and someone decides to trademark those terms? It’s crazy, and it shouldn’t be allowed. They shouldn’t be able to own those words. That’s silly and stupid and greedy, in my opinion.
Phew! Good thing I have “er” on the end of my *rb*n H*m*st**d title of my blog!
I think the very notion of “intellectual property” is just.plain.wrong.
I agree. I thought of you, too, and you probably would have gotten a letter from them if they’d TMed it with an “er”. Craziness!