Family Trying To Claim Ownership Of 'Urban Homesteading' Caught Plagiarizing After Moralizing On Plagiarism
from the is-that-a-petard-i-see? dept
We recently mentioned the Dervaes Family, and its quixotic attempt to trademark "urban homesteading" and to get people to stop using the descriptive and generic phrase. The family has been lashing out (somewhat comically) on their blog, including a recent post by Justin Dervaes about plagiarism (which, it should be noted is an entirely different issue than trademark infringement -- though it's not clear the Dervaes understand this).Either way, you had to know what was coming up next. Cathy Gellis points us to a report claiming that the Dervaes family blog plagiarized a number of items from another garden blogger, who methodically presents a variety of evidence to bolster his claim. He's now asking the family for royalties (including late fees). Of course, I find it pretty silly (and kind of petty) to ask for royalties in such a situation, but you have to admit it looks even worse for the family to be moralizing about plagiarism while doing it themselves.
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Filed Under: dervaes, plagiarism, urban homesteading
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Church's Law
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Re: Church's Law
That they failed to seek proper licensing and distribution agreements with the creators of the aforementioned works, instead placing the works on what is colloquially referred to as a "pending list" (i.e., any payments to be made for the use of the aforementioned works are reserved, pending an agreement with the artists who created the works).
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Heh
http://www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_what_is_plagiarism.html
Is this considered proper citation?
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Re: Heh
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How dense do you have to be to plagiarize a blog post about plagiarism?
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Can't plagarize book titles
Look up 'Urban Homesteading' by the Urban National Coalition, published in 1974. Earliest use of the phrase in a book that I found by looking at the first page of the retrieval of books on google was 'A treatise on homestead and exemption laws' - 1878.
So much for the claims of modern plaintiffs.
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Re: Can't plagarize book titles
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Screw this, let's all talk volleyball!
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Re: Re: Can't plagarize book titles
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traderigiarism ?
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Can't trademark common terms...
See the "...treatise..." book first published in 1878.
Just because they may have been issued a trademark doesn't mean it's defensible. Trademarks are not examined before issue and no determination is made as to the validity of the claimant's claim. That comes later.
The form they probably filed with Facebook is...Notice of Intellectual Property Infringement (Non-Copyright Claim).
There are several groups using the term and/or title "Urban Homesteading" on Facebook today. I guess it took a short time for the Facebook IP team to weigh in on the subject.
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God bless the Dervaes
At least they got their message out first. "We are vindictive, selfish assholes. But we garden. So that probably evens everything out, eh Internet?"
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What makes a trademark?
This term has been used since the 70's to describe government programs, which seems to me like their trademark would be BS.
Check out Google's ngram viewer (that search their huge books library for terms):
http://bit.ly/eQ8YWX
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I'm willing to embrace the 'live by the sword, die by the sword' aspect along with the schadenfreude aspect.
Perhaps the parties LIKE going to court, see it as sport and this allows them to satisfy an inner need?
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Urban Homesteading Trademark
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Dervaes trademark
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