You may want to educate yourself on something known as "The Striesand Effect".
The Dervaes family in Southern California is getting a Masters level course on it, now that they started threatening bloggers, publishers and Google over the terms "Urban Homestead", "Urban Homesteading" and a few others they have trademarked.
If it were a matter of someone re-using their content without permission, no one would have any objection to them protecting their copyright. There are established methods for correcting those transgressions - whether intentional or innocent.
None of those methods involve getting a trademark on common terms.
You also don't get much community support and cooperation when you threaten Facebook in to removing the pages of like-minded folks. (Facebook has no spine - no customer support - and will not check the facts before acting on a request like that. They proved that in many cases involving just this family...keep that in mind if you utilize that outlet to connect with fans and customers.)
Denver Urban Homesteading was one of those who lost their page. (Unfortunately - for the Dervaes family - DUH is ran by a retired lawyer who is now organizing to challenge the issuing of the trademarks.)
Highlighting their confusion between trademark and copyright is their notice to Google, trying to get them to remove a link to Amazon, where the popular book 'The Urban Homestead' is listed. (That is a direct link - not an affiliate. Order your copy today!!)
Not only do they not understand the law, they don't understand how the internet works.
The Urban Homestead Experiment recieved the 'blogger version' - minus section 3. This allows you to judge the Dervaes defense that they did not send 'cease & desist' orders. They appear to infer that the use of the common term 'urban homestead' infringes on their trademark, and that they want the target of the letter to refer to their family whenever they use the term. They make no mention of that site actually re-using any of their original content without permission - only the term urban homestead.
Since Deanna already has a head start on listing everyone talking about this today, I will direct you to the Crunchy Chicken for a whole new set of blogs for you to follow. A great example of how the 'net is supposed to work, and whole new addition to your information network.
Instead of learning from their mistakes and taking some good advice from their community, they have dug themselves a deeper hole by releasing a rediculous defensive press release on Friday.
As far as I'm concerned, the Dervaes family removed themselves from the community and I will honor that - by not visiting (or linking to) their websites or purchasing any of their wares.
Reward good nieghbors. Ignore the obnoxious ones.
Facebook - Take Back Urban homesteading
And - the Electronic Frontier Foundation enters the fray: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/02/riding-fences-urban-homestead-trademark-complaints
Posted by: Jim | 21 February 2011 at 12:31