Path to Money and Power

The Dervaes family (you all know the ones, the Path to Freedom folks that everybody falls all over the place to link to) have applied for a trademark for the terms "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading" because they beleive that while they didn't actually coin the terms,  they came up with the application, and so  these terms are therefore their intellectual property.
This all  means that if you dare declare your backyard a lawn free zone and if you dare buy a chicken or two or grow a cabbage and a carrot and say, "urban homestead" or "urban homesteading" you are infringing on the precious intellectual rights of the Dervaes family.    Can you say "Monsanto"? 

They went as far as registering the terms   with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Then their lawyers sent letters off to around 14 business in California that use the terms in their company names. Can you say "McDonalds"? Read this.

I never had that much admiration for the family because they were not unique to me. Their land was very much like my own grandmothers land (nearly the same  size but my grannies was inland in the low dessert which she managed to make bloom without Dervaes around to show her the way to "apply" things. Urban Homestead established in 1975) and I thought that overall, my grandmother had done a much better job on hers. She didn't feed a small family like the Dervaes four, but a large one (16 people). She grew specialty crops for market-in the dessert with very little water.  To me,  the Dervaes' were unimpressive copycats by comparison.  My grandmother wasn't the only urban farmer I knew back then or over the years and not one of the others to my knowledge needed Dervaes to show them the "application" of the lifestyle. Funny how that goes.

This family is not unique in anything other than the careful buildup to the branding a trademark helps grant a product. What is the product here? They are.

But you know, we live in the age of false prophet bloggers. They all "specialize" in something that enough people think they cannot learn on their own-or for some reason by reading an actual  book.   And the name of the game really is branding. Now, I don't refer to blogs that actually teach certain things such as creativity or true skills here. I respect those teachers. But there are an equal amount of other blogs that take advantage of lifestyles.  These  look alternative but its the same old game, "the good of the planet " used as  subertfuge, much more affective than anything Coca Cola has ever come up with so far.

In that sense, the fact is that without blind faith from followers, this trademarking would not have been an issue. Who enabled this family? Anybody who failed to see past the PR. It was always there, clear as day. In that sense, they were not dishonest about their intent.
This doesn't make it less dispicable, but less surprising.

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