Hormel Loses Latest Spam Trademark Suit
from the try-try-again dept
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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"I don't understand how I can have meat in my email."
That's going to happen...
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Can they sue....
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An interesting case study...
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...
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