Are Parents More Internet Savvy Than Teens?
Wearing Down Our Opposable Digits

Hormel Loses Latest Spam Trademark Suit

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from the try-try-again dept

Mon, Jan 31st 2005 12:03pm — Mike Masnick
Hormel seems to have a love-hate affair with internet spam. The company that created SPAM, the sort of meat-like product, has responded in many different ways to the issue of spam email, eventually appearing resigned to the fact that it existed, and even poking fun of email spam at times. However, they do still send out the angry lawyers every once in a while when someone tries to trademark a name with spam in it. Unfortunately, that's not working very well, as it seems pretty unlikely that anyone is confusing the canned stuff with the stuff people want to can. So, it's not surprising at all to have the latest Hormel trademark claims against an anti-spam company tossed out.
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  • identicon
    Jared, 31 Jan 2005 @ 12:57pm

    No Subject Given

    User call to Help Desk:

    "I don't understand how I can have meat in my email."

    That's going to happen...

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    data64, 31 Jan 2005 @ 3:15pm

    Can they sue....

    The US government for having a CAN-SPAM act ?

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Director Mitch, 31 Jan 2005 @ 4:01pm

      An interesting case study...

      ...would be to see what happened to the copyright and ownership issues for brand names that became generic names. Refrigerator, for instance, was orignially a brand name, although it is still used within the industry for which it was coined.

      SPAM may be one of the few examples where a brand name crossed outside its industry to become generic for something else. "Star Wars" comes to mind as another example, and Lucas lost his lawsuit against using that term for a space based defence system.

      I'm sure someone has written on all of this, but I don't have the time or energy to Google it just now...

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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