Remember this story? Hormel has lost its attempt to regain control of its famous trademark in England, arguing — in an appropriately silly way — that it wanted to reserve rights in the mark for technical consulting.
Hormel argued that an average English speaking person would not necessarily associate “spam” with junk email.
That argument was rejected by the appeals board. “The applicant’s contention that the word SPAM would not be understood by a large part of the average English speaking public in the sense given by the examiner, cannot be sustained,” it said. “Indeed, the board notes that the term SPAM is not only listed in technical dictionaries as a technical term for ‘unsolicited commercial email’ but is also cited in general dictionaries.”
Bloody Vikings, indeed!
UPDATE: It gets worse: “Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?”
Originally posted 2009-10-18 20:03:56. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
One Reply to “Spam lovely, tasty; not actionable”