There has been a great deal of grumbling lately, rightfully so, in the urban homesteading community about the trademarking of the term “Urban Homesteading” and related terms by the Dervaes Institute. I will admit that I don’t know much about the Dervaes family but I am learning quite a bit about urban homesteading thanks to my wonderful and amazing friends and I think that that is a telling statement. Until this whole debacle I hadn’t ever heard of the Dervaes Family but I sure as hell knew the phrase urban homesteading and several urban homesteaders.
According to the Dervaes’ under their trademark I would have to be talking specifically about them and their services when I refer to my wonderful friend Marie (or her husband) as an urban homesteader or their beautiful mini-farm as an urban homestead. I would have to call them a “modern homesteaders” working on an “urban sustainability project” or risk getting a letter asking me to remove the terms*. Well I find that utterly ridiculous. So without further ado here are some photos of their urban homestead!
- Raised Beds. The start of an urban homestead.
- Greens growing on an urban homestead
- Urban homestead cucumbers
- One productive urban homestead
To all you urban homesteaders out there I support you!
*The letter they are sending is on their site but I refuse to link to it and give them more traffic. For more information about what’s going on check out The Crunchy Chicken who received a letter from the Dervaes Family.
Yay!! It’s Marie and Urban Homesteaders like her that are SO inspiring!! It’s so important that people know where their food comes from, and growing your own is a great idea!! Marie and others are wonderful resources for those of us with small kitchen gardens, who want to do more!!! It amazes me that one family could take such a simple, widely used term and trademark it– like me trademarking the term Mama… ridiculous, pointless. Thanks for the great post!!
Beautiful photos of Marie and Chris’ wonderful garden – major homestead envy here!
Because I am
1. Your older and somewhat annoying sister and
2. an Attorney
I have a couple of questions regarding the trademarking. First I did read the letter that was sent (I saw all these tweets and I had to research) I saw nothing in there that tells you to remove the terms…if they are properly cited you can do whatever you want. Also where did this term “urban homesteading” come from. The Dervase institute has been using it since at least 1985 (that would be 25 years ago, when you were 10.). Who is to say that they were not the first to start the term as it applies today and all people have gotten the term from them and their progeny.? In that case why is it a problem to trademark a phrase that started a movement and/or codified it.
Second question is why are these people being slandered by the micro-farm community? There is allegations that they are suing people for using this term and that they are trying to run blogs out of business etc. I see nothing of the sort. I see a family that has been innovative in their land use and are trying to protect the intellectual property that they have spent (at least) 25 years building. I would imagine Jenn that if I took phrases and pictures and ideas from your website and wrote a book, which made me money (or gave me the credit) based on all your hard work, you would be pissed. All the family is asking you to do is cite their webpage and institute when using their trademarked names. Christ just use the term micro-farm , it seems to trip off the tongue easier anyway. Plus they trademarked it first. We do live in a capitalist society (are you not trying to make money on your ads for your blog?), however I think this is less based on money that it is them trying to protect their intellectual property and ideas.
Hey you want me to comment 🙂
“I saw nothing in there that tells you to remove the terms…if they are properly cited you can do whatever you want.”
They most certainly do their letter states “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.” I do understand that you are a lawyer and may interpret this differently but to me they are saying that if I am not specifically talking about one of the Dervaes Institute products that I can not use the words “Urban Homestead” (etc…). If I am then I would have to mark the term as trademarked.
“Also where did this term “urban homesteading” come from. The Dervaes Institute has been using it since at least 1985 (that would be 25 years ago, when you were 10.) Who is to say that they were not the first to start the term as it applies today and all people have gotten the term from them and their progeny?”
The terms urban homestead and urban homesteading have appeared in literature and in references to organizations since the 1970s but most specifically in an article in Mother Earth News in 1980. They were originally turned down in their quest to trade mark the term urban homestead and urban homesteading because the term was too close to Urban Home (which was already trademarked) and was also “merely descriptive” and not associated with the Dervaes family specifically.
“I would imagine Jenn that if I took phrases and pictures and ideas from your website and wrote a book, which made me money (or gave me the credit) based on all your hard work, you would be pissed.”
Absolutely I would be pissed but it would have to be my work, my intellectual property, my terms. They have every right to go after someone who takes their ideas but that goes way beyond using the same phrase to describe what they are doing. They co-opted a term that was already out there and then trademarked it and the EFF agrees.
Additionally I think that this has blown up so much because the Dervaes Family holds themselves out there to be above money, above corporate influences etc… So trademarking those terms and then requesting Facebook to take down pages, groups to change their names etc… is a move that is quite hypocritical.
Dervaes institute was registered in 2006. Dervaes even didn’t use the term “urban homesteading” in connection to their services and goods, because they used “path to freedom”. They register the above trademark (actually, service mark) in Supplemental register, that gives almost no rights to the owner. It doesn’t stop Dervaes from sending request to Facebook. Our farmers market lost fan page with 2,200 customer base due to Dervaes action. We are in another state and in different business, but because “urban homesteading” is a part of our name Dervaes attacked us on the Facebook. We work now to get everything back.
Information is on the new website: http://www.denverurbanhomesteading.org (copies of documents are available there also).
After further discussion with Jenn, I see her point of view and understand people issue with the trademark. However this should be sorted out in the legal area (with bloggers free to discuss and dissect the issue). 🙂
Hey Jenn (& everyone!) – I enjoyed your piece and the beautiful pics of MG’s garden. I’m also intrigued by Juliette’s arguments, since I’d only been looking at the issue the way Jenn framed in in her blogpost.
To me, a big part of my discomfort with the Dervaes action w/r/t the uh, phrase in question, hinges on the fact that the phrase is *already* part of common parlance. If the D family coined the phrase and trademarked it as part of their specific business nomenclature, that would be one thing. It would be like “Kleenex” – in recognition of the fact that the brand name is super pithy and tempting to use as a general term, they took the step to identify it as their own, as specific and unique to their own efforts (in disposable hankies or non-rural farming, as the case may be).
But that’s not what happened: the phrase was invented, it got popular, and after the fact the Devraes decided that it was their own private thing. Making a grab of the phrase ::after:: it has entered general use is more like trying to trademark the word “tissue,” a word that has been around long before the invention of Kleenex and which has long been used to describe a multitude of things beyond disposable hankies.
I also was very influenced by the chilling effect website, and by the notion of private entities generally trying to grab and reserve for their express use parts of the language that had previously been used by everyone, in an effort to shut people up on a given topic. That strikes me as concerning, along the same lines of SLAPP lawsuits or privatizing ANY publicly held good – land, air, water, you name it – a trend I find very concerning indeed.