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EU Rejects Spam Maker's Trademark Bid
kog777 writes "The producer of the canned pork product Spam has lost a bid to claim the word as a trademark for unsolicited e-mails. EU trademark officials rejected Hormel Foods Corp.'s appeal, dealing the company another setback in its struggle to prevent software companies from using the word 'spam' in their products, a practice it argued was diluting its brand name. The European Office of Trade Marks and Designs, noting that the vast majority of the hits yielded by a Google search for the word made no reference to the food, said that 'the most evident meaning of the term SPAM for the consumers ... will certainly be unsolicited, usually commercial e-mail, rather than a designation for canned spicy ham.'"
Are we really using Google to decide such matters? What else could Google decide for us?
I have a feeling Hormel will soon file suit against the surviving members of Monty Python...
...damn vikings.
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SPAM search
And what is the first item listed, you ask? Why WWW.SPAM.COM - From Hormel Foods Corporation. Includes history, fan club, and facts. I'm pretty sure Hormel has had to fork over a lot of money to keep them at the top of any search for SPAM, to keep the trademark from being wiped away.
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The next time someone bitches about Apple protecting their iPod trademark, I'm just going to forward them a link to this article.
Slightly off topic and at the risk of sounding like a troll, I just thought of a big dick joke a la Drew Carey and just had to share: "My dick is so big even the spammers stopped sending me mails."
the most evident meaning of the term SPAM for the consumers ... will certainly be unsolicited, usually commercial e-mail, rather than a designation for canned spicy ham.
I just want to know how to order breakfast correctly. The last time I asked for Spam spam spam spam spam spam ham eggs spam spam spam bacon and spam, I got 6 advertisements for Viagra and Cialis, 3 pleas for extraditing Nigerian capital, an offer to augment my anatomy and blueberry pancakes served with Raspberry syrup and 2 raw quail eggs.
Please help!!
Sincerely,
A Sad Spam Solicitor
You would be surprised if I told you how many people I know that make decisions based on the result of a Google Fight. Google has become the fortune teller or the magic 8 ball of our time.
This leads to the question of whether a company should continue to be allowed to claim a trademark word that everyone on the planet uses for something entirely unrelated to that company or its product.
"Ultimately, we are trying to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, 'Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?'"
- see-into-other-areas chose to name their product after Microsoft's Operating System?
These would be the same people that will ask why makers of glass-that-fits-into-buildings-to-allow-people-to
Get a grip, Hormel.
Summation 2
that most people do not associate the term spam with the spicy canned meat? I think we are still far away from that actually occurring. They may have a point internationally. However, the term "spam" is still strongly associated with both unsolicited email and the ham product in most English speaking person's minds. That google has more hits for uncolicited email is irrelevant. Nevertheless, I do not think Hormel's mark has been diluted because this use is so completely different that has no real affect on its product.
Based on the judge's comments from the article, the reason Hormel is being denied its claim of trademark dilution is that their trademark is diluted?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Hormal Foods created this word in 1937. This would be like telling Xerox that their name can be used somewhere else. While Xerox may be commonly used for any copy machine, Xerox still owns the trademark and other companies cannot put Xerox on their product. The same goes for Kleenex, Coca-Cola (in fact coke invented the word cola, and only lost the trademark due to failing to defend it). This is a crappy ruling.
Well I guess the Coca-Cola Corp now know where they stand should they wish to persue a line in "other" products called coke....
since when did Spam become spicy? i've always been aware of its' tempting ham/chicken/various pork products goodness...and who can deny the succulent self juices that the log o' love is wallowing in? i'll never forget that summer when me and young becky atkins had our first taste of the forbidden half-ham/half-buffalo/half-emu pork product...the slimy, meat jello sliding down our chins in the summer sun... but i regress... spam is not spicy, unless you dress it up in something hot and sexy!
You've got a serious case of patent == copyright == trademark.
They are not all the same.
The SCO/IBM case is (mainly) about copyright.
The Transmeta/Intel case is about patents.
Hormel's case is about a trademark.
Besides, has Hormel really actively protected their trademark ever since people started using the word "Spam" for unsolicited e-mail? I've only heard about them doing so for the last two, or perhaps three, years.
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Companies spend all this money trying to get name recognition for their products, but then fail to see the value of the free publicity this kind of thing can get them. I can see being bugged by it if it there was any sort of room for product confusion - like everyone referring to soda as "Coke", but in this case, there's a clear distinction. No one is going to confuse "Spiced Ham" for junk e-mail.
It just goes to show (once again) that corporations really don't get the internet. Just like the Weird Al Story a couple of weeks ago. Publicity doesn't have to be bad just because its not on your terms.
Custom, hands-free Linux installs. Instalinux
copyrights, patents and trademarks are different. while they all might fall under the umbrella of "intellectual property" they serve different purposes.
y
IANAL.
but, iirc, SCO is filing patent claim against for misusing specific code that was patented. i could be horribly wrong, I admit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_propert
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
Most telling from Hormel's spam site
Hormel has chosen not to fight this as agressively as perhaps they should have . . . trademark dilution is a very slippery slope. As the new meaning that is endorsed by the compnay overwhelms the trademarked meaning, the trademark becomes more difficult to protect. While I am not advocating agressive trademark protection and defense, I am not surprised that Hormel is having difficulty.One can't have it both ways . . . allowing people to misuse or use trademarks in a way that confuses or dilutes the popular meaning and expecting full protection of the trademark. In fact I may get flamebaited modded for this, but I am a bit surprised to see many of the posts from the /. community side with the government protected corporate controlled trademark people instead of the more populist spam definition that grew out the grassroots computer user community.
Perhaps this docile reaction from the /. community is because Hormel chose not to protect their trademark as aggressively as they could have . . . Unfortuately this would be a lesson to corporations. Trademark dilution is something that could happen . . . if they aren't agressive and vigilant.
So let me get this straight, you make vague comparison between 3 cases of unrelated law (trademarks, copyright and patents) in a manner supportive of a question and then fail to ask a question?
Since there was no intentional point to your comment, the unintentional point will have to suffice. Even although you didn't make direct use the phrase, the grouping is possibly a symptom.
"The European Office of Trade Marks and Designs, noting that the vast majority of the hits yielded by a Google search for the word made no reference to the food..."
Of course on Google, which is connected to computers via a series of tubes, the most hits were about a computer related issue, but maybe in the real world the statistics would be slightly different... if you do a Google search on asp, you aren't going to find anything about Egyptian snakes.
SCO sued IBM over UNIX in US.
Transmeta sued Intel in US.
This decision was made by EU.
from what i've read, hormel is only trying to defend itself against the commercial use of "spam". while there's not going to be any product confusion between spam and software, i don't see that they have much of a choice when it comes to defending their name.
isn't that a key point with trademarks? you have to defend it? once you stop defending it, you are agreeing that anyone can use it and that can bite you back in your own space.
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I suggest that your product, no matter how you may percieve it has NEVER been a favorite. Why do you think that the term for unsolicited e-mail uses the "SPAM" name? BECAUSE NO ONE REALLY LIKES SPAM (both the canned meat product and the unsolicited e-mail) TO BEGIN WITH!!!! I would suggest that you consider renaming your product. Do some market studies and find out just how you can rethink things. Hell. Call Steve Jobs! He "thinks different", he could probably help you out of this scrape with insignificance. So here's my take on it.
1. Reinvent yourself as hip, now, happening and totally new. In fact, why don't you "go out of business" and then start up as a new food company selling the same product under a new name, with new packaging and new applications.
2. See if you can hook up with the latest trendy chefs and Food Network folks. If you can get the Iron Chef to feature you as the ingredient of the day, you'll be golden.
3. You might want to thin out the spam formulation and put it in toothpaste tubes as a cracker topping.
4. Or... you could even make "fun time" packs for kids like a Build Your Own Hotdog set where kids fill digestable casings with your meat product, suture it and then cook them for the ultimate meaty experience!
5. A friend and I have also posited the possibility of a new meat based alcohol. In the ever increaing quest to prove manliness by the male segment of society, it should be possible to market it as a proof of manliness to drink your meat-a-hol.
And that's just off the cuff! See. Hire ME as your idea man and I promise that while Spam (the food substance) will be a thing of the past, your new look and feel will propel you into more success than you've EVER experienced in all your years of existence.
(Someone please mail this to Hormel corporate for me. M'kay?)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Trademarks are a form of consumer protection. They allow you to buy Kellogg's Corn Flakes and get the product you are expecting, from the maker you presume to make it. The only real corporate protection is relatively incidental, being that it prevents competing and equivalent products from imitating the genuine article. So you have two purposes at work: consumer protection from confusion, and corporate protection from unfair competition arising from imitation.
Does SPAM referring to "unsolicited email" confuse consumers, or misrepresent the corporate's product to unfairly compete? In this case the SPAM trademark applies to a canned meat product. The term is also in general use to refer to unsolicited email. They are separate industries, and consumers are unlikely to confuse unsolicited email with a canned meat product. Similarly, there are no concerns over unfair competition by imitation. Thus there is little harm to the consumer, nor a real concern to the corporation.
Further, the SPAM trademark owners let the term become diluted over the years to the point where it is commonly accepted; had they intervened a decade ago, their arguments would have been stronger. They are likely statutorily obligated to actively protect their trademark rights. Even if not a statutory obligation, failing to protect their rights is prejudicial in the eyes of most courts.
Spam is a product name, not a general term for something almost every single person has in their home. It's MUCH more common to refer to windows as the glass thing than the software thing. The opposite is true for spam. When was the last time that the spiced meat product usage came up in one of your conversations? When was the last time that the unwanted email usage came up in conversation? I don't eat the spiced meat product, and I don't know anyone that does. Nearly everyone that has an email address gets the unwanted email though, or at least knows someone that does. In other words the crappy email definition is much more widely used than the spiced meat product usage.
I'd say Hormel is in some danger of a generation of kids growing up wondering why Hormel named Spam after crappy email (ok, maybe just the dumb kids). I also think Homel lost this battle long ago. They should give up the battle and admit that they've lost the trademark as far as people including Spam in bulk-email stopping products.
If Hormel was smart, they'd see this as a product opportunity. Use the fact that people are always thinking of your product name. Have a weird ad campaign that associates the two in some funny way. Sponsor some kind of spam email blocking contest. Give away free Spam filtering to anyone that wants it. Sheesh, they own the damn trademark as far as the spiced-meat thing is concerned, start taking advantage of how your product is on the lips of people on a daily basis. The way to fight an association you don't like is to create a new association, not dumb legal tactics.
AccountKiller
I like their motto: 'Living on the edge'. True for spammers if you ask me.
check it here: http://www.spam-energydrink.com/
Others have already pointed out the difference between patent, copyright and trademark.
;-). Transmeta may be more successful, if they can show violation of their IP in court.
I'd like to add that filing a lawsuit does not guarantee you win. In the case of SCO, it already seems they will suffer a massive defeat (see Groklaw.net
C - the footgun of programming languages
Whether or not the Spam brand name is being diluted, everything I see says that sales of SPAM and other Hormel products are up, up, up. Surely name recognition has increased in the last five years, arguably because the word "spam" has become so commonplace.
The Specialty Foods and All Other segments continued their strong performance from the first quarter and the Grocery Products segment reported impressive growth in microwave tray items, HORMEL bacon bits and the SPAM family of products....
The All Other segment improvement in sales and operating profit was driven by the International operating segment. Export sales of the SPAM family of products were up 37 percent and continued improvement from the China operations were the biggest contributors.
Three Squirrels
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Heh. Pursue a "line" indeed.
Captcha = "shakes"
You can understand why the company puts in so much effort to protect the good name though. After all Spam (Scattered Parts of Anonymous Mammals) is important to many people. Both Hawaii and Alaska love Spam. As has been noted about Alaska:
For more tasty info on the Simulated Pieces of Appalling Mutants see The Amazing and Fabulous Spam Site which includes a 300 DPI Scan of SPAM
a href="
It's funny to see how much effort the company puts into targeting the brand given that Spam is so important to
"If Hormel was smart, they'd see this as a product opportunity. Use the fact that people are always thinking of your product name. Have a weird ad campaign that associates the two in some funny way." Spam. Bad for your inbox, good for your lunchbox!
If Hormel was smart, they'd see this as a product opportunity. Use the fact that people are always thinking of your product name. Have a weird ad campaign that associates the two in some funny way.
They have billboards in Minnesota (where SPAM is manufactured and the SPAM museum is located) which are humerous in nature. Last trip through the god-forsaken state (I'm from Wisconsin), one of them made a reference to the "other" spam...
Spam the meat really isn't bad.
Hormel I am afraid is going to regret not fighting this sooner. They where pretty reasonable about their trademark and now they are getting nailed.
Frankly I think this is a bad ruling. They just wanted to stop the commercial use of the the word Spam for junk email blockers and such. This seems reasonable to me.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
No shit, Google pwned again.
"SPAM" is junk meat. "Spam" or "spam" is junk email.
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you scared me. at a first sight I had the impression you said "Bill's Gay"...
On the Internet, SPAM fries you!
sic transit gloria mundi
"Cola" is a generic term for a certain type of soft drink, but "Coca-Cola" is not. In Texas all softdrinks are called Coke. Are their settlements for trademark infringement bigger there too?
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You're confused about trademarks: they don't give you exclusive use of the word in all ares of life, only in a particular one. So since spicy ham in a can is unlike unwated email, they'd never be able to stop this usage anyway.
It doesn't matter how reasonable their wish is. Trademarks just don't work like that.
As an example of this overall idea, consider Apple vs. the Beatles company Apple, which had trademarked "Apple". Apple was OK using Apple to describe computers, as long as they didn't do music.
...a lot less persons would know about their product.
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So can we start calling bug-fixes BANDAIDS?
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Actually yes, they started fighting this a while back when it came to their attention. I think their first efforts were back in the 90's. The problem then was who do you sue? Everybody who uses the word? (And please, no RIAA jokes!!)
I think the biggest issue is that the judge refered to Spam as a "meat." I think "quasi-digestable meat-flavored puddy." would be more accurate.
Also, remember that the term "spam" was adopted for junk email because of the concept of dropping a can into a fan and it getting splattered everywhere.
"I suggest that your product, no matter how you may percieve it has NEVER been a favorite."
eno2001, may I introduce you to the states of Alaska and Hawaii? AK and HI, this is eno2001.
Just becuase you and six people you know don't like the stuff doesn't mean there aren't enough people out there that keep buying the stuff for it to continue to be quite profitable. Why would Hormel care about their trademark so much if their food product wasn't profitable enough to justify the expense of these legal actions? Do you see Circuit City going after the DivX people much any more?
The entire point of this recent action by Hormel in the EU was to prevent somebody from trademarking terms like "Spamhaus" or "Spam Assassin" or any other use of the term "Spam" in the trademarked name of a U(C)E-related software or service. As they've stated, Hormel has no real problem with the use of the term "spam" as slang, but they have a problem with having to compete with another trademarked definition of the term. Especially when the canned meat product is (ZOMG1) still selling well.
I think they'll eventually turn this idea into a gameshow. I could picture it now "Okay, which do you think will be the first result found for a search for "DDR". Will it be RAM or Dance Dance Revolution?" I bet NBC would pick that one up.
Is it just me or is it not going to upgrade to Vista in here?
You know, this whole issue might be avoided if Hormel were to have ventured into the IT industry years ago. They could have pioneered a junk email filtering service like Postini or Cloudmark.
Then they could have successfully argued that they own the trademark "SPAM" in both industries (food and IT) and start protecting their trademark accordingly.
And, who wouldn't buy Anti-Spam(R) from the people who invented SPAM(R) in the first place?
-David
No, nobody, including the principals, knows what the SCO/IBM case is about. This, of course, is mainly due to SCO not telling the Court or IBM what they're complaining about, and changing their arguments every other week.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
rather than a designation for canned spicy ham
As we all know Spam most certainly does not contain any ham or any kind but instead contains copious amounts of "Peckers" according to Billy Bob Thorton. UmmHumm
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Usually, when people go to court over names, it's that someone tries to use the "good" name of a product to sell his own product. Or that someone wants to sell a product in a new area where another company holds the name rights. In general, though, both companies want a "good" name and people feeling "good" about the name, so they buy it.
With Spam, it's reverse. Spam, in the meaning of junk email, is something nobody wants. It has a bad reputation and my guess is the fear that this bad name might bleed over to the Spam in the sense of canned meat, that people think canned meat called Spam is bad. It might not be tangible, but subconscious connections can be at least as powerful as conscious ones.
Spam's brand name is not getting "exploited" by those making Spambusters, Spamfilters, Spamwalls and Spamblockers. It is actually being hurt by connecting the brand name with something unwanted, something most people do not want to have at all and would almost pay to get rid of.
Just imagine a "virus" would be called a "Butterfinger" and ponder what this might do to the sugary snacks...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I exchenged email with Hormel about spam years ago. At that time they wee fine with it. As a matter of fact, they used to say on their website that is was ok, depending on the case.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Good!
What this means is that do not have to switch to the alternate name for unscolicited junk email. I'm sure that they would not have objected to us calling it "Whore Mail".
Why do you think that the term for unsolicited e-mail uses the "SPAM" name? BECAUSE NO ONE REALLY LIKES SPAM (both the canned meat product and the unsolicited e-mail) TO BEGIN WITH!!!!
BZZZT!!!!! And thank you for playing. Here's your lovely parting gift.
UBE is known as "spam" because of the Monty Python sketch, wherein a group of vikings kept singing the phrase "Spam", until it drowned out all other conversation, much as junk email does with your (unfiltered) inbox.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I like Spam (the product not the email). Have you ever tried it? It's actually not bad. The term 'spam' for email has absolutely nothing to do with the taste of the product and whether or not people like it, (and from the number of sales and length of time on the market it is apparent that many people do like SPAM).
It has to everything do with the Monty Python skit however. They're the ones (if anyone can be blamed) most responsible for the coining of the phrase. When I first heard the comment 'Spam Email' used, like pretty much all the other net geeks I associated it immediately with the skit, cause it was funny and all us net geeks watched Python.
That the phrase is still in use twenty years later is rather surprising. I don't think anyone knows who the first computer user was to use the term, it's just one of those things that happened. But it has nothing to do with people's like or dislike of the product.
So Googlefighting can establish law now? Cool.
Or Porsche (Portia)?
Well, the reason it's called a "trade mark" and not a "trade name" is that it's allowed to just be a shape. For example, it may well be that there are lots of references to things being 3 meters long (3m) in the net, but 3M's logo doesn't come into jeopoardy as a result of that...
I have to wonder if this suit would have been decided differently if Google's search were strictly case-sensitive. For example, a search for marks that are multiword or that contain characters that google thinks are word breaks or even that are not characters at all will be thwarted by this.
Another possibility is that Hormel's IP lawyers made an ineffective case, failing to cite some of the ways that a Google search might not tell the whole story, or might bias the result.
At least one argument I'd have raised is that any word that managed to catch on (requiring little more than it be short and pronounceable) would have certainly been the dominant Google search result when the issue in question is "the informal name for something that occurs in our mailboxes more than anything else on earth". That is, did they take into account the fact that people mention what they see, and that there's more email spam than virtually anything else just because there's so much spam, not because spam didn't get the word out?
A thought exercise: If we'd decided to call spam something else, like "coke", would Coke have lost its trademark? How zealously has Coke defended itself against the illegal drug trade calling its product "coke"? If Coke gets more hits, I suspect it's not because Coke has more zealously defended its name, I suspect it's because it tastes better than SPAM.
So if we make a graph of the tastiness of the item in question and plot whether it's trademark protected even in the case that it had become the common name for spam, would we find that everything on the "not very tasty end and hence not much talked about or sold" got a "no" and everything on the "very tasty and hence highly deployed" got a "yes". Is this "tastiness step function" the definition of what it takes to be protected as intellectual property?
I think Hormel correctly protected its mark by identifying that in a particular form of use, they asserted control, and that the common use was to be distinguished. Barring the use purchase of a large number of armed soldiers world-wide, something thankfully out of the purchase power of even most corporations, I don't see how they could control what the world does. And I thought trade mark law was about telling people what they could and couldn't do, not about telling corporations when they have and haven't spent their precious marketing dollars correctly.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Maybe in the US Spam=Can of food. Here we use "Corned Beef", "Canned ham" or suchlike. I never heard in my whole life in the 2 EU country I lived and 6 different placed, that spam=canned food. Only until recently I was taught the other meaning....Here on slashdot.
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not to nitpick, but I thought everyone knew that it was SPiced hAM.
Still tastes like crap...
But in Hawaii, it is the most popular meat available
I just had a Spam McMuffin for breakfast. Wait, did I just infringe someone's trademark?
Perhaps that's where their daughter was conceived?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
They have billboards in Minnesota... Last trip through the god-forsaken state (I'm from Wisconsin)...
You're from Wisconsin, and you refer to Minnesota as "god-forsaken"?
Glass houses, my boy, glass houses...
There's no such thing as bad publicity. Hormel really needs to get smart and leverage the mindshare that spam has to sell some real SPAM. Yeah, nobody likes the email variety, but everyone knows the name now, so use it to sell some meat!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Quoting from the Hormel-created SPAM & the Internet page (which has been around for quite some time now):
Their attitude toward the Internet community's use of their trademark has been fairly enlightened to date.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Re-read what I wrote. Maybe you will gain a new appreciation for what it says if you THINK.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I saw Spamalot on Broadway a year or so ago (Tim Curry! Hank Azaria! David Hyde Pierce!), and they were selling limited edition cans of Spam in the lobby, with a Spamalot label with a cartoon of the cast.
5 bucks.
Yes, I bought one.
The reason I ask is my cats smell each others asses regularly and never seem interested in sniffing the roses I bring in for my wife. So I'm just wondering what you would read into that?
:)
and you just got a +4 insightful for correctly identifying a shoddy sample. tsk tsk tsk.
Lest you forget that Spam has been around for a lot longer as a trademark for canned ham and it was not a word in common usage before Hormel started using it. Then later people used it to describe unsolicited bulk email. You analogy falls apart on that basis.
Well..you are nothing. I am coding multiple gateways for each bill payment and I am calling it Bill Gates.
I used to work with a person from Iowa that did summer work at the plant. He would joke that "Pigs go in, Spam comes out, no remainder"
Even better, sell the domain name "SPAM.COM" to an AS/AV vendor, and make more money than you ever did on canned meat products!
Eh, the only naming convention Steve Jobs could recommend to Hormel to rename SPAM would be to call is iSPAM :)
Then hordes of new naming conventions would follow. The method of canning spam would be renamed SPAMCanning, and the method of shipping the SPAM would be called SPAMCasting.
Cheesy Movie Night
They're rent in the same office block as I do, so I ought to go and have a chat with them :-)
Insert
I think I'd agree with the attempt to get their name protected. I mean, if some dork in their marketing department decides on a junk email campaign it's going to get very complicated to sort it out.
"Hi, I'm complaining about your spam"
"Oh, terribly sorry Sir, was the product in a broken container?"
"No, it's about your email"
"You just said spam"
"Yes, that's what I meant"
{etc}
Insert
I'm pretty sure I've seen companies get nasty when people develop cross products to borrow someone else's famous name.
Is the percentage of use of "spam" applied to the unrelated topic of emails *more* than people referring to Spam the meat. If true, I can definitely see how this could weaken a brand image.
There was a case where a Portable Toilet maker tried to make a "Here's Johnny" line of toilets. They were successfully shot down by Johnny Carson's legal team.
I think the usage could have been blocked if the company was (were?) fierce enough at the very dawn of the graphical WWW about 1993. In 2006 it's too late.
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They always have their 4th place spot on google for "mystery meat"
I don't know what the point is of all the moaning about this (on Hormel's part)... if they wanted to complain they should have done it a long, long time ago before the meaning change became entrenched
Hormel should rename SPAM "Email".
You're mistaken. Just try to start marketing "Coca-Cola" brand running shoes and see how far you get.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
In other news, Coca-Cola sues coal miners and drug dealers for using the word "coke"....
Please, it's really unfortunate that their brand name is being diluted, but you don't see Coca-Cola complaining that their trademark is a dangerous drug or a bunch of slimy black goo.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
How come SPAM(R) vs spam? How did the use originate, and who was the first to use it to classify junk email? I've seen the comments about nobody wanting neither SPAM(R) or spam, but where did it come from? What could we call junk emails from Hormel if they started mass uce-ing?
Pink tender morsel
stuffed inside a little box
What the hell are you?
Socket 7 rocks.
Is it telling that the first thing I thought when I saw the title is "What could a spammer possibly have to trademark?"
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
since when is SPAM spicy?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
As I recall, Hormel was cool about this, simply stating that spam could be Unsolicited Commercial Email, as long as everybody left SPAM alone.
Hormel would be okay with "anti-spam" software, but not "anti-SPAM".
What changed? Whatever. Hormel should have acted twelve years ago. I liked them for being cool about the internet use, and for making a product that tastes good grilled with pineapple on kabobs.
I'd rather call unwanted email advertisements "UCE" anyway.
VM and MVS on an IBM/GiantFRAME used a virtual WINDOWS product long before Bill Gates stopped sucking his thumb, if he doesn't in fact still do so...
"I DON't LIKE SPAM...."
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
packers > vikings, all I gotta say (bitter rivalry). Win lose or draw...
Or a particular type of bad, in this case.
They should use the association to their advantage. They could show an ad with a guy typing on his PC. Suddendly the machine beeps loudly. A big red message appears, "Warning: You've Got Spam!" Suddenly he jumps up in the air dancing and singing, "Oh yeah, I've got Spam, oh yeah!" The printer then produces a can of Spam and he grabs it and runs to the kitchen with it in glee.
Table-ized A.I.
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
I suggest that your product, no matter how you may percieve it has NEVER been a favorite.
...Over 6.7 million cans are sold annually in Hawaii, which equals 5.5 cans per year per Hawaiian.
More than 122 million cans of SPAM are sold worldwide each year. In the U.S., a can of SPAM is purchased every 3 seconds.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Pure spin. Trickery, deception and lies. Those numbers can be cooked up any way they want them to. The fact is that all of those cans of Spam product, are purely novelty. I know this for a fact because I myself owned a can of Spam Potted Meat Product back in the early 90s. Why? Certainly NOT to eat it. It was a novelty item purchased as part of a gag gift. And then that gag gift was bestowed upon me by the person who recieved it and didn't want to have anything to do with it. I then put it in my car as a totem. It was ensconced in the area where you would normally have a car stereo and I called it my Potted Meat God that all who enetered must worship before we drive. (Worship was anything from a simple kiss on the spam can, to the placement of any monetary unit in the receptacle below the can) Once I got rid of the car, the can of meat was disposed with it. I've never once met a person who at Spam in their lives. So I suggest that all of these purchases of the supposedly beloved meat product are purely novelty in nature. Anyone stupid enough to eat Spam and claim to like it is no longer safely classified as a civilized human being.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o