Hormel Sues Over SpamArrest Name 526
slammin'j writes "According to this article from the Star Tribune, Hormel has filed a lawsuit against Spam Arrest LLC. for endangering "substantial goodwill and good reputation" of their meat product, Spam. If Hormel wins, it could be bad news for umpteen companies that make use of the word
spam in their name."
Little suprise (Score:2, Interesting)
Not very good for their marketing dept. All that has changed is that now companies are using spam in their names as opposed to just it being a generic term.
Besides just getting the "dignity" of the name of spam back (what little there is) they also get some publicity, and maybe some cash.
Generic? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hasn't the term "spam" been rendered generic by now? I don't think Hormel has done anything in the past to protect the trademark against this use. Besides, the last time I read their website it indicated that only the form "SPAM" was trademarked and copyrighted by them.
Hmmm....
Hormel (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to agree with them on this. Anything like a company named "Spam Arrest" or "Fuck Spam, Inc." or something like that could be considered slander. I mean, if you ignore the e-mail side of things, it sounds like a company set up to make money by telling people how bad Spam ham is.
They say this is OK on their website... (Score:2, Interesting)
From the site:
This seems like a break from that policy.
Using spam as slang (Score:5, Interesting)
>the word spam as a "slang term," as long as pictures of the product
>are not used with such references.
This is true. There used to be an entry in the FAQ on Hormel's website saying that they were cool with people using the term "spam" to refer to Unsolicted Commercial E-mail (UCE). They only asked that folks did not use "SPAM" in all uppercase.
From reading the article, I gather that Hormel is concerned that another commercial entity with the word "spam" in its trademark could cause confusion with the luncheon meat. (at least among computer-illiterate people)
Whether those concerns are enough to stop Spam Arrest from using the word 'spam' is something that will probably be determined after a legal battle.
Actually they've gone to some lengths (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm
I think they might be objecting to combining Spam and Arrest. (Considering what their (Hormel's) product does to the cholestorally challenged they may have cause for complaint.
Trademark protection and dilution are certainly a strange area of the law to deal in.
Re:ick. (Score:3, Interesting)
I bet the Python skit actually increased sales! But I can honestly say that receiving unsolicited email has never given me the craving for their canned meat product.
Re:The onion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good reputation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Little suprise (Score:2, Interesting)
If Symantec decided to rename their Cleansweep Product to Windex to imply that it cleans windows, I'm sure SC Johnson wouldn't be too happy.
Re:Good reputation? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hear it's treated with reverence in Hawaii for some reason...
That's because for a while it was about the only meat you could get imported into hawaii. Or something like that. My parents lead a field trip there this past spring and when they got back they explained the hawaii spam connection. Anybody want to expand on my half-remembered explanation?
-sam
This isn't the first time. (Score:5, Interesting)
The film Muppet Treasure Island includes a character named "spaam" the leader of the Pig Pirates. Hormel got an injusnction against the use of their name but then lost it Ultimately the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the U.S. concluded:
See here [harvard.edu] here [geocities.com] and good o'l google [google.com] for more info.
Lest we forget Hormel does sell Spam brand Boxer Shorts [spamgift.com] in the Adult Apparel [spamgift.com] section of their spamgifts catologue.
Re:Good reputation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Importing food to Hawaii, Micronesia, etc. is expensive and difficult. Fresh foods, like dairy products and breads, come by boat (too bulky to ship by air, for the most part), but that means a delay of several days to several weeks before they wind up on store shelves. Lots of things go bad in that amount of time, even on refrigerated ships.
Spam, and to a lesser extent, canned meats like corned beef from Australia, fill the need for meat nicely. They stay fresh indefinitely and travel easily without the need for refrigeration. As a result, they're much cheaper than "fresh" meat and much more popular.
(Travel writer Paul Theroux joked in "The Happy Isles of Oceania" that islanders liked Spam because it reminded them of their history of cannibalism. Of course, very few islands ever had a history of cannibalism in the first place, and Theroux admits that he threw the idea out there as a cheap joke, not an anthropological theory.)
Re:Good reputation? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.modernsurf.com/spam/ [modernsurf.com]
In the beginning Hormel had sold only twenty thousand tons of Spam when World War 2 started; it was during the war that SPAM, like S.O.S. (dried chipped beef on toast, known to soldiers as ?Shit on a Shingle?), became notorious. SPAM was a lendlease staple, sent in such abundance to Allied troops that Nikita Khrushchev later credited it with the survival of the otherwise starving Russian army, a can of SPAM is like heaven after eating a shoe sole. In England, where beef was severely rationed, SPAM was the only meat like matter many families ate for weeks on end.
Hawaii, staging ground for the war in the Pacific, fell so in love with SPAM that to this day, Hawaiians eat an average of six cans per person per year, far more than in any other place on earth. I know a few Hawaiians who eat two cans a week. Because it was unaffected by meat rationing, SPAM was eaten on the American home front in record quantity, too.
Re:but it's not (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh for pete's sake (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, if a company that deals with email trademarked "spam*" it would be more likely to get the recognition everytime someone used the term to refer to email.
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
And there is no way Spam Arrest are the good guys here.
SpamArrest are spammers [samspade.org]
Re:To late foo! (Score:1, Interesting)
You are correct that trademarks are good only for specific uses but there is no regional limitation with trademarks. If you think about it your assumption is very silly since it uses the subjective basis of a company being "famous".
Hormel tried this before with Henson... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hormel tried this before with Jim Henson productions. Can't quite remember which Muppet movie, but one of the characters' name was Spam and he was of course, a pig.
Hormel got all bent out of shape, took Henson to court alleging causes of action under both copyright and trademark law. Henson claimed "fair use" and won.
This is a little different in the sense that it is a straight trademark dilution claim. Now before everybody starts posting that "it's not confusing! One's computer spam and one's pork left-overs squished in a can", dilution is not about confusion... it is about loss of goodwill and damage to reputation as a cause of the defendant's use of the mark and it applies to "famous marks".
The interesting issue is that companies in the computer field who use "Spam" in the name are doing so because the public coined the term Spam to mean "junk mail". They didn't give it's negative connotation!
IMHO, Hormel should not be allowed to prohibit a company from using a generic term in its own industry especially when it is Hormel's responsibility to, from the outset, make it abundantly clear to the public that Spam should not be used to describe "junk mail". There failure to do so bars any recovery (AFAIC).
-AnthonyRe:HEADLINE WRONG - RTFA (Score:2, Interesting)
Inside of your trade, trademark ensures no-oneelse can use your name, they don't have to [try to] trademark it, for you to force them to stop using it, only you can use that name inside that trade.. (Watch Antique Road Show, or go to somewhere like Colonial Williamsburg, and will you get an idea of how old an idea a "trademark" is. )
Outside of the trade you operate in, there is some protection, but it is less. You may have noticed companies in different trades, with the same name, this is acceptable, Just like Smith the basketmaker's, mark, wouldn't be confused with Smith the blacksmith's mark, even if the marks looked similiar, because only the town fool, wouldn't be able to tell a basket from a horseshoe. [But, then again, it seems the more recent the law, the less it seems based on common-sense, so history can only take one so far.]
Anyway, It may , very well be, that while they never liked the company using spam in its name, but they simply had no actionable case, until the company moved to trademark it.
So, it
Re:Good reputation? (Score:3, Interesting)
SPAM may have become popular back in WW2 because of rationing and shipping issues but today that's really a non-issue, yet it's still popular. I'm guessing the reason it has stayed popular is because it goes well with rice and everyone eats lots of rice in Hawaii.
I'm originally from Hawaii and yes, I like SPAM(the Hormel kind). Although I think Hormel sueing over the SpamArrest name is rather rediculous.
Re:Generic? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pork vs. Ham (Score:3, Interesting)
The hams are the thighs. And not only of pigs, though that's how it's commonly used these days. It's associated with the word "hamstrings".
Turkey ham, if those are indeed the thighs of the turkey, is a correct, but strange, usage. The flavoring of the turkey ham to mimic that of the pork ham is valuable for sales, but linguistically unnecessary.
OTOH, I've only heard the lower leg called the drumstick on chickens and turkeys. I think it's normally called the shank, but that may not distinguish between the fore and hind legs.