In Related News...
Hormel Foods, the maker of SPAM, has filed two legal challenges with the US Patent and Trademark Office to stop SpamArrest from using the name Spam, for which Hormel holds the trademark, in their product name. In answer to your first question, yes, they still sell SPAM. In answer to your second question, yes, they're serious. Hormel argues that the company has carefully protected and invested in the brand name, and that the public could confuse the meat product with the technology company. Go figure.
In their defense, Hormel did hit SpamArrest with a cease and desist letter earlier this year, when SpamArrest first filed papers to trademark their name. And to give them their props, Hormel does recognize that spam is used as a slang name for "unsolicited commercial email." They have gone so far as to spell out exactly what they consider the proper and improper use of the word "spam" on their website. They say, for example, "We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE (unsolicited commercial email), 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. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters." They compare the use of "spam" to denote UCE with the use of "Star Wars" to refer to the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Mickey Mouse" to mean "unsophisticated:" a slang phrase for every day usage. Hormel seeks to keep another company from appropriating its name for business purposes. Procter and Gamble, after all, makes Puffs Facial Tissues, not Puffs Kleenex. One can understand Hormel's desire "to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, 'Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?'"
Unfortunately, this blows my plan to name my new cigar line "Li'l Smokies" all to hell.
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In Other Related News...
Al Franken's new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, hits bookstores today, the same day lawyers for Fox News Channel offer arguments against the book in court. To be fair and balanced, Fox's arguments aren't against Franken's book, but against its title, which they say uses the phrase "fair and balanced" in violation of Fox News' trademark. Fox asserts that using the phrase beneath a picture of Bill O'Reilly is an attempt to confuse consumers, who will think the book is a legitimate product of Fox News.
They will if they're idiots.
The cover actually features Al Franken standing in front of a block of four video screens, which depict, clockwise from top left, Ann Coulter, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Bill O'Reilly. Plastered across all four screens in large, red, block letters is the word LIES. Underneath the screens - directly underneath O'Reilly and Cheney, in fact - is the phrase "And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them." Only at the bottom of the cover is the subtitle, "A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." If Fox truly believes their audience will be confused by this image, they don't hold their audience in very high regard.
Word on the street is that the entire purpose of the lawsuit is to appease Bill O'Reilly, who has never been a fan of Franken, and who has been chafing since a confrontation with him at a book convention in Los Angeles at the end of May, during which Franken accused O'Reilly of lying about his credentials and O'Reilly called Franken an idiot. The spat was televised live on C-SPAN2 and rerun by the channel the following weekend. As a result, traffic to the Book TV website, the companion to the C-SPAN program, tripled, bringing the most visits in the site's five year history. O'Reilly weighed in on the fracas in an editorial in Monday's New York Daily News, in which he wrote that his show and Fox News are successful because "We don't do drive-by character assassinations, and we don't denigrate opposing points of view by launching gratuitous personal attacks." For anyone who's ever watched the Fox News Channel, this is funnier than anything in Franken's book.
The result of all this hoohah has been incredible publicity for Franken's book, which shot to the top of Amazon's nonfiction charts. This is one reason why the book is being released today, rather than September 22, as originally planned. (That the lawsuit seeks to stop distribution of the book is another reason.) Dutton, the publisher, is printing an additional 50,000 copies, to supplement the 240,000 already in print. The controversy has helped Franken's other books as well. Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot is currently at 170 on the Amazon list, and the non-political Oh, the Things I Know! is at 540. O'Reilly's new book, Who's Looking Out for You, which is scheduled to be released the day after Franken's original publication date, comes in at 6,140.
Fox would do well to think of Spike Lee, whose challenge to Spike TV recently went down in flames. They should also remember that the courts traditionally hold a wide berth for satire. Finally, they should recall that there is a long precedent for authors using product names or corporate slogans in titles. A few examples, presented by the Authors Guild in support of Franken, are Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner and Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Somehow they overlooked Tom Stoppard's play, The Real Thing.
In their defense, Hormel did hit SpamArrest with a cease and desist letter earlier this year, when SpamArrest first filed papers to trademark their name. And to give them their props, Hormel does recognize that spam is used as a slang name for "unsolicited commercial email." They have gone so far as to spell out exactly what they consider the proper and improper use of the word "spam" on their website. They say, for example, "We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE (unsolicited commercial email), 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. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters." They compare the use of "spam" to denote UCE with the use of "Star Wars" to refer to the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Mickey Mouse" to mean "unsophisticated:" a slang phrase for every day usage. Hormel seeks to keep another company from appropriating its name for business purposes. Procter and Gamble, after all, makes Puffs Facial Tissues, not Puffs Kleenex. One can understand Hormel's desire "to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, 'Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?'"
Unfortunately, this blows my plan to name my new cigar line "Li'l Smokies" all to hell.
******************************
In Other Related News...
Al Franken's new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, hits bookstores today, the same day lawyers for Fox News Channel offer arguments against the book in court. To be fair and balanced, Fox's arguments aren't against Franken's book, but against its title, which they say uses the phrase "fair and balanced" in violation of Fox News' trademark. Fox asserts that using the phrase beneath a picture of Bill O'Reilly is an attempt to confuse consumers, who will think the book is a legitimate product of Fox News.
They will if they're idiots.
The cover actually features Al Franken standing in front of a block of four video screens, which depict, clockwise from top left, Ann Coulter, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Bill O'Reilly. Plastered across all four screens in large, red, block letters is the word LIES. Underneath the screens - directly underneath O'Reilly and Cheney, in fact - is the phrase "And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them." Only at the bottom of the cover is the subtitle, "A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." If Fox truly believes their audience will be confused by this image, they don't hold their audience in very high regard.
Word on the street is that the entire purpose of the lawsuit is to appease Bill O'Reilly, who has never been a fan of Franken, and who has been chafing since a confrontation with him at a book convention in Los Angeles at the end of May, during which Franken accused O'Reilly of lying about his credentials and O'Reilly called Franken an idiot. The spat was televised live on C-SPAN2 and rerun by the channel the following weekend. As a result, traffic to the Book TV website, the companion to the C-SPAN program, tripled, bringing the most visits in the site's five year history. O'Reilly weighed in on the fracas in an editorial in Monday's New York Daily News, in which he wrote that his show and Fox News are successful because "We don't do drive-by character assassinations, and we don't denigrate opposing points of view by launching gratuitous personal attacks." For anyone who's ever watched the Fox News Channel, this is funnier than anything in Franken's book.
The result of all this hoohah has been incredible publicity for Franken's book, which shot to the top of Amazon's nonfiction charts. This is one reason why the book is being released today, rather than September 22, as originally planned. (That the lawsuit seeks to stop distribution of the book is another reason.) Dutton, the publisher, is printing an additional 50,000 copies, to supplement the 240,000 already in print. The controversy has helped Franken's other books as well. Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot is currently at 170 on the Amazon list, and the non-political Oh, the Things I Know! is at 540. O'Reilly's new book, Who's Looking Out for You, which is scheduled to be released the day after Franken's original publication date, comes in at 6,140.
Fox would do well to think of Spike Lee, whose challenge to Spike TV recently went down in flames. They should also remember that the courts traditionally hold a wide berth for satire. Finally, they should recall that there is a long precedent for authors using product names or corporate slogans in titles. A few examples, presented by the Authors Guild in support of Franken, are Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner and Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Somehow they overlooked Tom Stoppard's play, The Real Thing.
posted by John Bliss at
11:09 AM
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