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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.'"
indeed, what an obviously self-selected sample set. Asking the _internet_ to tell you what spam is?
I reealize this was a European court and Spam is not popular over there, but imagine what you'd get if you asked, say 100 people as they walked through the canned meats section of a supermarket.
That's about as ridiculous as asking google to tell you what it means on the internet. It's all about context.
I don't think anyone would confuse spam with just email if you invited them over for a nice spam casserole. They'd just tell you they'd rather eat cat feces, which smells the same but tastes slightly better.
Seems to me that would be a bad call for Hormel and the EU court, although I suspect the quote here has probably been taken out of context and given undue weight.
Thing is, I see no reason at all for how a trademark could become genericized merely by becoming a common word for something completely different. (Python reference intended)
The point, as I learned it, was that a trademark becomes generic when it becomes the generic term for that product. E.g. "Cola" is a generic term for a certain type of soft drink, but "Coca-Cola" is not.
"Yo-yo" used to be a trademark for a specific kind of spinning toy, but they lost it when it became the generic term for that kind of toy.
"Windows" is a generic term to begin with. But it wasn't (and still isn't) a generic term for operating system software.
Now "Spam" is indeed threatened as a trademark, since people indeed are referring canned corned beef in general as "Spam". But I can't see any relevance in whether people use the same term to refer to unsolicited email or not. It's not like there is any risk the two 'products' would ever be confused.
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.
That's not what they were after.
Hormel already have the tradmark for spam the meat product. They wanted the trademark for spam as unsolicited email as well.. The EU courts said no, which seems reasonable to me - that meaning of spam is part of the common language.
It's the same as Microsoft asking a court to give them the trademark to 'Windows' meaning 'pieces of glass in the side of a house'. They wouldn't get it either (well, maybe in a US court, but not in an independent one).
Doesn't really matter. This is an example of how language changes over time. A word with one meaning this decade can have an entirely different one in the next, and once the new meaning is as firmly entrenched as "spam = junk email" is, there's no going back. 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, you're too late. About a decade too late. Stop trying to herd cats and spend your money on something that's actually achievable -- you certainly are not going to get anywhere here. The increasing backlash of corporatization of everything certainly won't help you either.
i am a soviet space shuttle