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Spam Lawsuit's Last Laugh is at Hormel's Expense

Posted by Zonk on from the junk-email-junk-email-eggs-and-junk-email dept.

Brian Cartmell writes "An article at the Minneapolis — StarTribune site covers a significant setback for the Hormel food company, in a case that's being closely watched by security companies across the country. Seattle-based Spam Arrest has gone up against the creator of the food substance in court, fighting for the right to use the word spam in its company name. The US Trademark Trial and Appeal board has sided with the spam fighters, agreeing that consumers of the Spam product would never confuse the food with junk email. 'Derek Newman, Spam Arrest's attorney, said the decision opens the door for many other anti-spam software companies ... "Spam Arrest fought this battle for the whole software industry," Newman said.'"

3 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Oh by goldaryn · · Score: 5, Funny

    And all this time I thought the emails "Give her more meat" were from Hormel..

  2. Settlement suggestion by ciaohound · · Score: 5, Funny

    Spam Arrest could change their name to Arrest Arrest Arrest Arrest Spam Arrest; that's got less spam in it.

    --
    Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
  3. Re:At whose expense? by Jay+L · · Score: 5, Informative

    and hormel wanted to cash in on the name despite (or because of) the declining popularity of the meat(ish) product... Instead, meh... They try to push the legal envelope and get a paper cut. Potted meatheads.

    Wow, you really just got that information from a doctor with a glove, didn't you?

    Hormel actually 'got it' pretty early on, and had a good sense of humor about it, too. They're in a bind, of course, because they don't want to lose the trademark for the meat, but they don't want to lose the goodwill of the community by acting all RIAA-like. (Ironically, their meat itself is NOT in a bind. (Little sausage-casing humor there.))

    So at first, they said "Look, just use lower case letters for the e-mail, and we'll use capital letters for our product." But that didn't really work, because nobody could remember which was which, and everyone always likes to capitalize Internet terms that aren't acronyms.

    So then they said "OK, just don't trademark it yourself."

    Now they're losing that case. (Ironically, their meat itself is NOT in a case. (Little sausage-binding humor there.))