Fighting malware and spam

Hormel denied spam copyright

EU court rejects trademark dispute.

Hormel Foods, maker of the SPAM pressed meat product, has lost a case brought before the European 'Office for Harmonization of Internal Markets' (OHIM), aimed at protecting its trademark of the word SPAM.

A second appeal to an application first brought almost two years ago has been rejected by the OHIM, who found no substance in Hormel's assertions that 'normally well-informed and reasonably attentive' people are not aware of the term spam in its application to unsolicited email, and instead stated that as the word is in dictionaries and in general use worldwide, providers of anti-spam products are unlikely to be confused with meat removal systems.

Hormel has long argued against the use of the term spam when referring to spam rather than SPAM, a trademark held in over 100 countries. A statement of the company's opinions of the matter is available here. The company's preferred term for nuisance email is 'unsolicited commercial email', or UCE.

Producers of anti-spam software and services will now be able to continue using their current naming and marketing language, and Spam Bulletin will not have to become UCE Bulletin. Hormel, meanwhile, will continue to live in fear of the day when SPAM-eaters of the world ask 'Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?'

The full ruling of the OHIM board is available (PDF format) here.

05 October 2006

Tags: spam