We are Denver Urban Homesteading, an indoor farmers' market in Denver, Colorado supporting small, local farmers. We use our Facebook page as our main means of communicating with our customers. Facebook disabled it two weeks ago due to a complaint by a family church in Pasadena, CA that has trademarked the phrase "urban homesteading." Of course, they have not trademarked "Denver Urban Homesteading" but that position does not impress Facebook which will not enable our page, and will not allow us to access the contact information for our 2200 customers.
Trademark owner Dervaes Institute will not communicate with us - other than to have sent us a cease and desist letter one week AFTER they took down our page - and consequently we have no way to get back our own intellectual property (my postings and my photos) and our customer list due to the phony trademark claims of the church.
Justice is denied us twice by the law: first by the erroneous issuance of a trademark for a common phrase ("urban homesteading" is even a subject heading in the Library of Congress) and second by not keeping up with technology by not having procedures to contest phony trademark takedowns.
And Facebook practices corporate irresponsibility: the DCMA does not cover takedowns of trademarks but they nevertheless follow the DCMA copyright rules by immediately disabling accounts accused of trademark infringement but then they do not follow the DCMA rules for re-enabling the material after a counter notification (I tried this and they told me to bug off).
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We lost our Facebook page
Trademark owner Dervaes Institute will not communicate with us - other than to have sent us a cease and desist letter one week AFTER they took down our page - and consequently we have no way to get back our own intellectual property (my postings and my photos) and our customer list due to the phony trademark claims of the church.
Justice is denied us twice by the law: first by the erroneous issuance of a trademark for a common phrase ("urban homesteading" is even a subject heading in the Library of Congress) and second by not keeping up with technology by not having procedures to contest phony trademark takedowns.
And Facebook practices corporate irresponsibility: the DCMA does not cover takedowns of trademarks but they nevertheless follow the DCMA copyright rules by immediately disabling accounts accused of trademark infringement but then they do not follow the DCMA rules for re-enabling the material after a counter notification (I tried this and they told me to bug off).
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by jamesbertini.
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