As the year draws to a close I thought I’d review some of our posts from the previous year starting with an update on the trademark dispute over the terms “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading”.
In February of this year the Dervaes Institute (DI) sent a cease and desist letter to over a dozen different individuals and organizations including our publisher Feral House/Process Media, public radio station KCRW, Denver Urban Homesteading, and the Santa Monica Public Library. In addition DI successfully manged to get Facebook to take down a page about our book The Urban Homestead, that our publisher had put up, in addition to Denver Urban Homesteading’s Facebook page. As of this date both of those Facebook pages are still down.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Winston & Strawn LLP have generously assisted us in challenging the DI’s trademarks. The DI filed a motion to extend discovery earlier this month. I expect a decision from the Trademark Court sometime next year but I’m not going to predict when. The Trademark Court works slowly and via correspondence. We’ll let you know of any major developments.
Thanks again to the support of all the readers of this blog and to our attorneys.
For more background on this issue see our February 21 post.