A family in California wants to trademark the words "urban homesteader" and "urban homesteading." Right now, as I understand it, they hold a supplemental trademark. This means they have a certain amount of time to prove that their use of the words is exclusive to only them. Meaning, all of us other urban homesteaders don't use those words. This is ridiculous. I wrote that it was a fluid and everchanging movement and trying to narrow it down so finitely is a disservice and rather insulting to the rest of us.
Yesterday was the day many, maybe thousands, of people peppered Facebook, Twitter, and their blogs with those words. One part was to post your visitor tally prior to your post and then after your post. My visitor tally for yesterday was 112. You'll be surprised to hear that once again 90% of the visitors were actually looking at the post about henna in my hair.
The other thing I was trying to accomplish with my post was to not specifically say why I was writing the post that way. I wanted it to look commonplace and not give exclusivity to the trademark seeking louts. For me, if I wrote it saying, "I'm writing this because of that family," then it gives them exclusivity and wouldn't show generic usage.
So if I get a letter in the mail saying I should stop using those words I will show it to you.
Today was Day 2 of No Poo Hair. I'm doing rather well. Last night I washed my hair with conditioner only. Here's my pic. I wore it up today because I just do that a lot anyway. It looks and feels fine. I'm not surprised. I have a feeling the real test of sticking it out is in another day or two.
As a newbe to your blog, I have yet to read this henna hair post. I am intrigued.
ReplyDeleteThat Urban Homesteader thing is an absolute joke!
Cheeseboy- Here's the link for the post. I wrote it last October. As of now the visitor count for the post is 1,361. I'm guessing it must pop up in search engines, though when I googled it nothing came up...It's a mystery to me.
ReplyDeletehttp://julie-rants.blogspot.com/2010/10/henna-my-hair.html
I'm sure I'm not the first to go back to see how you got poo in your hair. I'm glad that the explaination was less tragic than it sounded.
ReplyDeleteI hope that the judge laughes these douchebags and their copyright lawyers out of court! After a long lecture on Frivolous Lawsuits wasting the Court's time.
Oh Em Gee. Do you read mollyonmoney.com? You two are separated at no-poo-baking-soda-loving birth! If you also have chickens, I'm going to assume you're the same person with two online identities :-D
ReplyDeleteRyan and I watched an interview with that family that I believe was done a few years ago?? Anyways..we had some respect for them until all this legal brew hahah was going on. I find it RIDICULOUS that they're trying to coin a term when it goes against all of the principles instilled in the practice. Frustrating.
ReplyDeleteloridyan- I don't have chickens, at least none I'll admit to. Homeowner's association. I hear they are working on it. And then..heehee...lots of eggs!
ReplyDeletestephanie- exactly. I've been reading up on it and an interesting thing of note is that even if you have a trademark, if you don't vigorously defend it...forever...you lose it. I don't see them doing that.