Fire Cider Court Case - will copywrite law trump 'the peoples medicine' 🌿

Marjory Wildcraft
Marjory Wildcraft Posts: 1,615 admin

I hope you join us on Thursday evening while I interview Rosemary Gladstar (and I think Mary Blue might gbe on the call also) to discuss the Fire Cider case.

We are all waiting on pins and needles to hear the courts decision.

If you didn't know, "Fire Cider" - which I've created videos about and just about every herbalist everywhere, makes this wonderful concoction every year - to warm you up and help build immunity during the upcoming cold and flu season. Rosemary Gladstar is credited as the oriogonal creator of the name of the brew. Rosemary has been teaching about it since the 1970's and wrote about it in her books and courses going back to the 1980's (see all Rosemary's books here https://www.storey.com/author/rosemary_gladstar/ )

Rosemary, and the herbal community in general, share openly and freely. A lot of these traditions go way, way back and are 'the peoples medicine'.

Then this company named Shire City Herbals went and trademarked the name "Fire Cider". That probably would have gone unnoticed by the herbal world except that Shire City started going after herbalists who used the name. Mary Blue said “At this point over thirty Fire Cider producers have been contacted by the trademark holder and ordered to stop using the term in commerce.”

And gosh, every herbalist I know of makes a version of the tonic. And seriously? Herbalists just don't make a ton of money... so this kind of trouble just hurts an already good hearted, grassroots, just gettin' by group.

The issue is big enough the NY Times wrote an article about it https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/style/fire-cider-herbalist-shire-city.html 

And a group of herbalists including Rosemary Gladstar, Nicole Telkes of Wildflower School of Botanical Medicine (TX) and Katheryn Langelier of Herbal Revolution (ME) and Mary Blue of Farmacy Herbs and others joined together to fight this - they have a website here: https://freefirecider.com/

I'll be taking questions during the one hour session with Rosemary this Thursday, and posting the links for the reply and other information here in this thread.

If you have a question for Rosemary, please post it here - I'll be reading this forum thread just before the interview. You can also send in questions during the event int he chat and questions area.

We will also try to answer questions live during the podcast.

Here are the details:

Thursday, October 10

4:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. MT / 6:00 p.m. CT / 7:00 p.m. ET

LISTEN ONLINE at the event page here:  

https://InstantTeleseminar.com/Events/118059384

ATTEND BY PHONE  by calling the phone number below:

1.425.440.5010

Then enter this guest PIN CODE: 470876#

Please put your questions here in this thread, and we will try to get to your questions via phone or chat during the live podcast!

Comments

  • Marjory Wildcraft
    Marjory Wildcraft Posts: 1,615 admin

    I never heard of them, Shire City, before this case either. Apparently the ruckus stirred up by the case has helped thier sales.

  • ines871
    ines871 Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭✭✭

    What? - When a thief, steals something that is Freely shared with anyone... for decades by its Originator, - how can the thief even be awarded a Patent ? - And what sort of disgraceful 'law' ?? lets thieves get away with such a total disgrace. "Two wrongs do not make 1 right."

    or am I missing something?

  • pseabolt
    pseabolt Posts: 48 ✭✭✭

    @rainbow , I don’t think you’re missing anything here. I think it boils down to simple greed on the parts of the Shire Town people. After all, how does one trademark a tradition?

  • Lyda Eagle
    Lyda Eagle Posts: 12 ✭✭✭

    Just so sad that it had to come to this. That any company that is promoting herbalism would do this. It is all about greed. They saw something that many people were doing and decided to steal the idea for themselves. I can't remember the company, but I remember one tried to trademark the term "sandwich" . They didn't win, just another example of greed.

  • LaurieLovesLearning
    LaurieLovesLearning Posts: 7,573 admin

    It is sad. We have that company's product up here in Canada too. We bought some before realizing who had made it when a store was clearing out most of its goods for 50%+ off for a reno. It had nothing to do with publicity in our case. I felt bad when I read that. 😣 I certainly don't want to support greed and thievery and won't buy it again.

    We both agreed that Rosemary's recipe (that I made) is much more potent and works so much better.