Last week the European Union rejected Hormel's attempt to claim Spam as a trademark for unsolicited commercial email. The word Spam - short for “Spiced Ham” - was coined by Hormel in 1937 as part of a marketing campaign so successful the word became virtually synonymous with canned meat. However, Hormel has been unhappy about the current use of “Spam” in the names of anti-spam software such as SpamBop and SpamArrest.
“We do not object to use of this slang term to describe unsolicited commercial e-mail,” the company said on its website, “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." The EU denied their claim arguing that “spam,” in this sense, is already a well established generic term, and it would be unfair to allow Hormel to privatize it.
Linguists who work on trademark cases are familiar with the major questions about trademark infringement. Do the names sound the same? Do they have the same meaning? In some cases, the question of whether the names look alike can be addressed by semiotic analysis. Clearly, though, consumers are not likely to confuse email spam with Hormel's meat product. In fact, the EU based their decision on a Google search for “spam,” noting that the vast majority of hits made no reference to the food and that “the most evident meaning of the term Spam for consumers. . .will certainly be unsolicited, usually commercial e-mail, rather than a designation for canned spicy ham.”
