Hormel Sues Over SpamArrest Name

slammin'j writes "According to this article from the Star Tribune, Hormel has filed a lawsuit against Spam Arrest LLC. for endangering "substantial goodwill and good reputation" of their meat product, Spam. If Hormel wins, it could be bad news for umpteen companies that make use of the word spam in their name."

Comments

Is this a change in position?

[c.derby]

What happened to:

"We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters."

They have a MUSEUM?

[Gherald]

For the love of SPAM

Oh my...

Re:Generic?

[jeffy124]

I thikn you are correct. They even published a statement some years ago saying they were giving up on trying to change. The rationale being that most people knew and were aware of the distinction.

Slashdot story on their statement:
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/05/29/0117200.shtm l

HEADLINE WRONG - RTFA

[wowbagger]

No, Hormel is not suing Spamarrest over their name.

Hormel is opposing Spamarrest's attempt to TRADEMARK "Spamarrest".

It is clearly stated in the article. The /. editors did not read the article, just the submission, which was TOTALLY WRONG!

Hormel has been pretty damn cool about the whole "spam as email/SPAM as meat" thing - go look at their web page about it.

Re:To late foo!

[aborchers]

RTA. They are opposing an attempt to trademark a name containing their registered trademark. Considering the typically litigious nature of other companies and Hormel's relative tolerance of the use of the generic term "spam", I hardly think they should be cast as the bad guy for opposing someone else trademarking a name containing theirs.

Re:Common Usage

[mahdi13]

Hasn't SPAM been put into the Dictionary?
Yes, it has been added

Etymology

[Scurrility Extempore]

For anyone interested on how Spam (the meat product) got its name, here's an excerpt from an ABCNEWS article about it:

1937: Hormel rolls out its first can of a luncheon meat it calls Spiced Ham. Kenneth Daigneau. An actor and friend of the Hormel family, wins $100 in a contest to name the pink product. The winner combined the "sp" with the "am" and got Spam.

RTFA

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

The Austin, Minn., food company, which introduced Spam in 1937, challenged Spam Arrest's applications to trademark its company name.

They aren't suing because they use the word "Spam" in their company name, it is the fact they are trying to get a trademark of their company name (Spam Arrest), which Hormel is trying to stop. The use of the word "spam" to refer to junk email has already been addressed by them. This time, it is in regards to somebody using their trademark in a manner they have not approved of.

Re:Good reputation?

[b!arg]

I hear it's treated with reverence in Hawaii for some reason...

Re:but it's not

[Fishstick]

according to the wikipedia:

SPAM is a canned meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation company that has entered into folklore. SPAM luncheon meat is also used as an artistic medium in SPAM carving contests.
The labeled ingredients on the original SPAM are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, sugar and sodium nitrite.

A Hormel official once stated that the original source of the name SPAM was "Shoulder of Pork And haM".

I seem to recall that the story was that the shoulder meat was being discarded/wasted and that the owner wanted to do something with it. He had the idea for 'canned luncheon meat' and the army picked it up and the rest is history.

Re:Good reputation?

[Talking Goat]

It's actually very funny... Hormel has been quite adamant about defending its SPAM(TM) for years, as I've noticed from reading some certain trade publications.

I've flipped through a few magazines marketed towards aspiring fiction writers, and these publications are littered with advertisements by companies demanding that writers reference their products correctly in any works produced. I specifically remember an ad by Hormel requesting that writers refer to Spam as "Hormel Foods Brand SPAM Luncheon Meat" anytime one would want to refer to it in some sort of work of literature.

Also, from the Spam.com Legal and Copyright Info page, I found this hilarious little bit:

5. Trademark Information. The following trademarks used or which are planned to be used in this site, whether registered or unregistered, are owned by Hormel Foods: SPAM; HORMEL; SPAMBURGER; SPAMTASTIC and any other SPAM-derived terms.

So if I make up the word "SpamWhore", well, it's owned by Hormel Foods, and should have been spelled SPAMWHORE. Even though they've never registered it. Too funny.

When does fair use ever come to the mind of a corporation?

Re:but it's not

[broller]

Its a "meat-like substance"

Ok, enough! SPAM is not just "meat like." It's meat! Not the best parts I'll admit, but calling it a non-meat is just wrong.

Ingredients of SPAM (from the SPAM FAQ):

• Chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added.
  
• Salt (for binding, flavour, and firmness)
  
• Water (to help in mixing)
  
• Sugar (for flavour)
  
• Sodium Nitrite (for colour and as a preservative)
  

Re:Generic?

[Blnky]

In slang terms it may be used quite freely as a generic term. However, as a product or service its a different story. A good example of this is jello. It is very often used as a slang term instead of gelatin. Unfortunately, as the rock band "Green Jello" found out, outside of slang usage, companies can and will enforce their trademark. The band was required to change their name and went to "Green Gelatin" instead.

Re:Pork vs. Ham

[ncc74656]

Isn't pork ham?

All ham is pork (ignoring turkey "ham" for the moment, since that's just a chunk of turkey flavored like smoked/cured ham), but not all pork is ham. A ham is a hind leg of a pig (or is cut from it). It's usually cured and smoked, but fresh ham isn't. Other cuts have other names (ribs, bacon, etc.).

Re:To late foo!

[Blue Stone]

"It looks like they are only suing because Spam Arrest tried to Trademark Spam. in that case I think they are in their rights because otherwise the UCE company could try to stop them selling their meat-like substance as Spam."

If people had read the article on their website regarding use of their tradmark name SPAM, they would also realise how reasonable the company has been [or had to be :) .]

"We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.

This slang term does not affect the strength of our trademark SPAM. In a Federal District Court case involving the famous trademark STAR WARS owned by LucasFilms, the Court ruled that the slang term used to refer to the Strategic Defense Initiative did not weaken the trademark and the Court refused to stop its use as a slang term. Other examples of famous trademarks having a different slang meaning include MICKEY MOUSE, to describe something as unsophisticated; TEFLON, used to describe President Reagan; and CADILLAC, used to denote something as being high quality."

The real origin of "Spam"

[yaphadam097]

This is totally wrong. The term "Spam" originated in the BBS days when lamers would post stuff that was OT or otherwise useless. The resulting traffic was "unfit for human consumption." Some people started referring to this as "Spam" which rapidly evolved into a verb (e.g. "Spamming") When mailing lists started to take over idiots would still post (or even cross-post) useless stuff which was referred to as "Spamming the list." This crap would accumulate in your inbox. Email advertisments had similar properties, not to mention that ad spammers started using mailing lists as a cheap and easy way to get a wide distribution. Thus the term "Spam" began to refer exclusively to unsolicited advertisments.

Re:The real origin of "Spam"

[Anonymous Coward]

got a link to back that up? The jargon file (and everyone else) attributes it to MPFC:

spam vt.,vi.,n. [from "Monty Python's Flying Circus"] 1.To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input data. See also buffer overflow, overrun screw, smash the stack. 2.To cause a newsgroup to be flooded with irrelevant or inappropriate messages. You can spam a newsgroup with as little as one well- (or ill-) planned message (e.g. asking "What do you think of abortion?" on soc.women). This is often done with cross-posting (e.g. any message which is crossposted to alt.rush-limbaugh and alt.politics.homosexuality will almost inevitably spam both groups). This overlaps with troll behavior; the latter more specific term has become more common. 3.To send many identical or nearly-identical messages separately to a large number of Usenet newsgroups. This is more specifically called `ECP', Excessive Cross-Posting. This is one sure way to infuriate nearly everyone on the Net. See also velveeta and jello. 4.To bombard a newsgroup with multiple copies of a message. This is more specifically called `EMP', Excessive Multi-Posting. 5.To mass-mail unrequested identical or nearly-identical email messages, particularly those containing advertising. Especially used when the mail addresses have been culled from network traffic or databases without the consent of the recipients. Synonyms include UCE, UBE. 6.Any large, annoying, quantity of output. For instance, someone on IRC who walks away from their screen and comes back to find 200 lines of text might say "Oh no, spam". The later definitions have become much more prevalent as the Internet has opened up to non-techies, and to most people senses 3 4 and 5 are now primary. All three behaviors are considered abuse of the net, and are almost universally grounds for termination of the originator's email account or network connection. In these senses the term `spam' has gone mainstream, though without its original sense or folkloric freight - there is apparently a widespread myth among lusers that "spamming" is what happens when you dump cans of Spam into a revolving fan.

NPR Story with interview with Spamarrest CEO

[mathin]

There was a good story on NPR's Morning Edition this morning about this ... The NPR story has a bit more 'meat' if you'll pardon the pun.

Hormel will totally frickin win.

[dpille]

Okay, first, there's no "judge". The article (obliquely) refers to the fact that Hormel is trying to cancel Spam Arrest's trademark applications. See, for instance, this record at the USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. These are administrative hearings with a panel and are not binding on any federal court. They are merely binding on the USPTO's own registration process.

Second, people are misunderstanding genericism. The key is whether the term at issue is generic for the goods or services for which the term is registered. Thus, you can't register PENCIL for pencils, but you sure can for vacuum cleaners. Whether the term is generic for other goods and services is not strictly relevant- one of the strongest trademarks in the world for beverages happens to be generic for the residue of coal left after destructive distillation. You all hear stories about THERMOS becoming generic for thermally-insulated bottles though failure to educate the public that THERMOS was a brand of thermally-insulated bottles, but now you're talking about the equivalent of astronomer's frequent references to exploding stars rendering a car brand generic- it just doesn't work that way.

Hormel should have enforced their trademark much earler to stop the alternative usage of the word

This line of thought is also way off for the same kind of reasons. When exactly did Hormel begin allowing use of the term SPAM by others to distinguish the source of goods or services? When did they begin ignore use of the term SPAM for *any item purchasable by a consumer*? They didn't.

So, nonetheless, I assume someone will persist in believing SPAM has somehow lost trademark significance through reference to unwanted email. Even if this were the case, it's yet another argument in favor of cancelling Spam Arrest's trademark registrations- Spam Arrest certainly use a generic term in their name if either of the parties do.

I can't believe Hormel will have any trouble convincing the TTAB that their mark is famous and entitled to a wide berth on the trademark register. Too well known, too well enforced, too long a period of time in use....