permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

On Nov 28, 2012, at 9:54 AM, venaurafarm wrote:

> Phil Ferraro, Director
> Institute for Bioregional Studies
> writes about Permaculture:
> "The term, permaculture, was patented by, Bill Mollison in
> the early 1970's

Just want to correct, probably unnecessarily, the error about Pc being 
patented. It never was patented or trademarked. Bill misunderstood copyright 
law and stated and wrote wrongly, many times, that permaculture was a 
copyrighted term. No one can copyright a word, an idea, concept, or a process 
(the last can be patented). He could have trademarked the term but did not, 
and when he or someone else tried years later, I believe that the trademark 
office ruled that the term is now too widely used to be trademarked, and is 
in the public domain.

Chaos rules.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com