Hormel Worried Over Relationship With Digital Spam

ABC World News Tonight reported this evening that Hormel, the maker of the canned-meat product, Spam, is worried that consumers will be confused between their product and the kind of spam that you get delivered to your inbox. Gimme a break!

I did a quick Google of the case and discovered this has been going on for a few years. In an article dated July of 2003, Hormel officials argued that:

…the company has carefully protected and invested in the brand name and the public could confuse the meat product with the technology company.

The technology company being referenced is SpamArrest, makers of software designed to combat spam — the email variety.

Are you kidding me? When was the last time you tried to eat unsolicited email?

I’m all for defending branding, property and so on, but this sounds to me like Hormel’s lawyers are a little too eager to come up with billable hours.

[tags]Hormel,spam,trademark[/tags]