Hormel Back on The Spam Offensive

Anonymous Howard writes "After an xapparent setback in litigation, Hormel Foods is again pursuing actions against entities and organizations over the 'spam' trademark. According to the web site of DSPAM, an open-source statistical anti-spam filter, "Anti-spam software manufacturers may be in for a rude awakening. Hormel Foods Corporation and Hormel Foods LLC have recently filed for extensions to oppose or to cancel many new and existing spam-related trademarks and are even filing a few technology trademarks of their own. The DSPAM project, a popular open source and freely available spam filtering application, has already received two such notices of opposition from the trademark trial and appeal board. The complete history can be viewed here. This came about a year after the software's user community scrounged up the fee to file for a trademark...""

Comments

Tough case

[bigtallmofo]

I understand why Hormel wants to do this. Normally you don't want your product associated with such a negative thing.

But Spam? Of the people that actually enjoy eating it, would anything dissuade them from doing so? I mean, they're eating gelatinous pig parts. They don't seem like very discerning consumers to me.

Re:Trademarks

[kfg]

You are correct, however, things get a bit more complicated when a company takes the trouble to invent a unique word to be their mark.

Exxon, Lexus, Infiniti, etc.

Coining a new word makes the mark stronger, because it begins its life innately attached to the company/product; and nothing else, as opposed to, say, "Bob's Garage."

Standard Oil even went to considerable trouble and expense to make sure their Exxon mark didn't have negative conotations anywhere in the world.

If you look down you'll find that Hormel is actually being rather reasonable about the whole thing, given the situation. They're defending their mark, as they must if they don't wish to loose it, but they really just aren't being dickheads about it. They accept that their mark, a word they invented just to be associated with their product, now has a new and second meaning.

But their concerns that in future people might wonder why they named their potted meat product after junk email are perfectly valid.

KFG