another tragedy of the commons

http://www.baycitizen.org/food/story/oakland-homesteading-school-caught/#comments

This link will take you to a tragic story. 

I have been hearing about urban homesteading for a long time, decades. And for at least ten years, I've been reading about chickens in backyards in Brooklyn and urban farms in San Francisco. And all my lifelong life, I have felt a sense of ownership in the common language of American English. Surely if one thing belongs to us 'in common' it is language?  In the mid-nineties, I remember hanging out with a woman participating in a program I was in who was launching urban homesteading in Detroit.  Her focus was teens growing food on urban homesteads.

Some clowns in Southern California have trademarked the phrases 'urban homestead' and 'urban homesteading'.  How is it possible for someone to assert ownership of ordinary language that belongs to the commons?

I have heard of urban homesteading for a long time. I never heard of the business that owns the trademark to the phrase until I read this story in baycitizen.org.

Take back the commons.