[Gllug] (OT- I think!?) SPAM?

[Andy Farnsworth]

For those unfamiliar with US Law, many of these "frivolous" law suits are
brought to court for one reason only, protection of their product name (or
trademark).  In the US, if you do not actively defend your trademark then it
is easy to lose control of it, especially if it comes into common usage.
Xerox and Kleenex are two of the big ones in the past.  It used to be
general usage to say "I just need to Xerox this..." rather than photocopy.
When the other copier manufacturers had machines and the Xerox name was used
for all copies, Xerox came close to losing control of it's own name and a
similar thing happened with Kleenex.  Many companies will bring suit against
people with no real intention of actually taking them to court over it, but
it is in their interest to show active defense of their trademarks.

Andy Farnsworth
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-----Original Message-----
From: gllug-admin at linux.co.uk [mailto:gllug-admin at linux.co.uk]On Behalf
Of David Damerell
Sent: March 26 2003 15:56
To: gllug at linux.co.uk
Subject: Re: [Gllug] (OT- I think!?) SPAM?


On Wednesday, 26 Mar 2003, davemyers at mailbox.co.uk wrote:
>I do remember hearing that the makers of spam were attempting to sue
>over the use of the name "Spam", quoting it as being deformation of
>character, and that "Spam" was a nutritious food source, and where

I think you mean "defamation". Hormel also sued over Spa'am in the
Muppet Treasure Island (losing); however in this case they didn't get
very far, because millions of people employ the expression for UCE and
you can't sue them all.

Finally they requested that people refer to email as "spam" and not as
"SPAM"; their product's name is correctly rendered in all caps.

--
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?

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