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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.'"
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.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
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.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Try this for a more accurate "spam" vs. "hot dogs" google fight:
o rd1=Spam+-email+-filter&word2=Hot+Dogs
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&w
Spam has been around since 1937. It was one of the few food sources widely available to the British in World War II (which is what Spam was in reference to in the Monty Python sketch Spam). It did just fine for the 33 years before Monty Python's Spam was first broadcast (1970). I highly doubt Monty Python had anything to do with it's popularity, and certainly neither did any internet abuse related use of the word.
The parent said
"You would be surprised if I told you how many people I know that make decisions based on the result of a Google Fight."
not
"You would be surprised if I told you how many people I know that make decisions based on the result of a Google."
X-windows existed well before Microsoft windows. Microsoft did NOT coin the term "windows" when refering to rectangular regions on a screen, or to a windowing system (The original Windows was not an OS, but just a GUI layer on top of DOS - much like X-windows is a GUI layer on Unix.