Homestead Hoopla or Trademark Tiff!

The blogosphere and Twitter are just abuzz. Well, the gardening, sustainable living, small farming areas of the aforementioned media outlets. Seems the Dervaes Institute has quietly trademarked a number of phrases including: urban homesteading, urban homestead and a few more. Now, the Dervaes Institue is a..... well, Google them and form your own opinion. I've read their blog and visited their website occasionally, but not recently. They've certainly caused a storm with this move. I am not a fan of trademarking common things like seeds, words and phrases. Urban homesteading is not a phrase they invented and I'm really surprised they were allowed the trademark. Garden Rant has a link to an announcement on the Dervaes family web site here. The Comment section of that post has been closed because, I suppose, the Dervaes didn't want to hear anymore protests. A new Facebook page has popped up called 'Take Back Urban Home-steading', which has gathered over 1900 members in less than twenty four hours. If nothing else, this is creating an interesting community of people committed to sustainable lifestyles and the freedom to use common words!