Hormel Foods, the producer of the canned pork product Spam is trying to stop the dilution of its product name. It doesn’t mind too much that “spam” has become a colloquial term referring to junk email. What it objects to is use of the word “spam” in naming commercial products.
The EU trademark office has rejected its application. Citing the high count of sites using the junk mail meaning in Google. The second site when I checked was “spam.com“, the spiced ham fan club. So its not like it doesn’t appear at all.
I suppose the moral of this story is trademark your product name ASAP.
- Spam-maker loses bid to trademark ‘spam’ (SMH, 12 Oct 2006)