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EU denies Hormel's claim to spam

By Justin Mann

On October 12, 2006, 6:28 PM

Spam is just a word, and it will remain that way thanks to the EU. The “Office of Trade Marks and Designs”, the agency behind trademarks in the EU, declined a bid from food giant Hormel Foods Corp to make the term “Spam” a trademark not only for food, but for unwanted emails. Hormel doesn't particularly like software companies using the term in their own software products, and though they have absolutely nothing to do with each other, Hormel still doesn't want other companies using “spam” as a selling point in any fashion:

"We do not object to use of this slang term to describe (unsolicited commercial e-mail)," the company said on its Web site, "although we do object to the use of the word "spam" as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term."
They'll probably go after the trademark again in the future. They are fighting many battles in the U.S., due to the prevalence of products with “spam” in their name.

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