permaculture

["Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>]

Just to add to this history of the word Permaculture.  It was trademarked in
1982 by a landscape architect in Florida, (probable one of Bill's first
students in the U.S.) and because the architect failed to prove up the
copyright by using it he lost it after holding it for six years.

I applied in 1998 in the hopes of fulfilling Bill's statement in the
Designer's Manual that the word was owned by all graduates of the PC Design
Certificate course but by then they told me it had appeared in the
dictionary was in the common language. The copyright I applied for was to
the graduates of a PDC just as Bill had promised - imagine my surprise when
I found myself accused of stealing permaculture from Bill.  I had already
been refused by the copyright office!

Just to be clear, I took Bill at his word when he said that permaculture
belonged to the world, and I still hold him to it - permaculture belongs to
all of the students, teachers, organizers and designers who operate under
the ethics of permaculture and the guiding principals. For purposes of the
Permaculture Institute we do not recognize those people who engage in
permaculture professional practice who have not completed a PDC and who are
not Diplomats.

Scott Pittman

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. 
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." 
~Arundhati Roy

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Toby Hemenway
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 12:50 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Permaculture definitions,

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



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