Postcard: Katonah

By Barbara Kiviat

Katonah, New York--a 12,000-person hamlet an hour north of Times Square--has a long history of standing up for itself. In 1897, after the state condemned the town to make way for a reservoir to serve the booming metropolis to the south, residents picked up their homes and moved a mile away. Literally. They loaded more than 55 houses and stores onto log rails greased with laundry soap and used horses to pull the buildings to a new town site. The Move, which is commemorated at the Katonah library with a diorama, took six months and is still talked about with pride. "There's this notion that we're not like everyplace else," says Deirdre Courtney-Batson, a historian who lives in Katonah. "People have a real sense of ownership."

That community feeling may well be part of what enticed Martha Stewart to buy a 152-acre (62 hectare) estate on the edge of town seven years ago. She later spent five months of house arrest there, and her company recently launched a furniture line named Katonah. But when the company moved to trademark the name Katonah for the furniture and a long list of other household goods last year, residents fought back. A February meeting--which featured Martha-made cookies--didn't prompt a withdrawal of the application, so the Katonah Village Improvement Society (KVIS) and two businesses filed petitions with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "To the people of Katonah," said KVIS president Lydia Landesberg, "it felt like identity theft."

What followed was the epitome of small-town activism. First came the NOBODY OWNS KATONAH T shirts and the Marthometer, a parody newspaper handed out at the commuter-train station. By summer, a fund raiser to cover legal bills had been put together; local musician Marc Black sang about Chief Katonah, the town's Native American namesake, as members of the Ramapough Lenape Indian nation, who had been enlisted to share in the outrage, looked on. Two recent high school grads took to the Internet with another protest song ("You're a craftsman who can make a vase in the dark. Please leave us be without a trademark"), and area writer Bill Tisherman reserved a Manhattan theater for a November performance of a 90-minute Martha roast. While the backlash followed in the tradition of other great Katonah protests (like its mid-'90s rally against Starbucks), this one was decidedly more personal. Some of the town's locally owned stores--where Martha and her staff regularly shop--put up anti-trademark posters.

Throughout it all, Stewart's company maintained it was only doing what any smart business would: trademarking a brand to provide better legal recourse should knockoffs pop up. After all, the lawyers said, no one protests Philadelphia cream cheese. But the people of Katonah, especially business owners, saw something sinister afoot in the attempt to trademark Katonah for dozens and dozens of product categories, from lamps to curtain rods to belt racks. After all, many of the village's shops, such as Katonah Yarn and Katonah Architectural Hardware, use the name. Could Stewart's company someday prevent a townsperson from opening, say, the Katonah Lighting Store?

On Nov. 2, Katonah claimed victory--of a sort. After months of negotiation, Stewart's company withdrew its trademark application in all categories except for four: furniture, pillows, mirrors and chair pads. "I guess that's workable," said Jim Raneri, a co-owner of Charles department store, housed in one of the buildings that made the Move back in 1897. Others in town were more dubious. "I have a hunch, give her an inch, she'll take a mile," said Tom Kiley, a co-owner of the photo shop Katonah Image. Yet for any town that's ever fought a giant, the result was heartening. Maybe Katonah will lose something by having its name trademarked. But it almost certainly gains something in the way it stood up for itself. The story will surely be told for years to come.