No, not that stuff that shows up in your e-mail box. That OTHER stuff. Y’know, that shows up on the dinner table. Sometimes. Maybe.
Actually, let me revise: Three cheers for the Hormel corporation, makers of SPAM!
Why?
Well, they’ve adopted a pretty easy-going stance regarding the use of the term “spam” for unsolicited commercial e-mail. They’ve recognized (a) that they really can’t stop the language from evolving new uses of a term they originated and (b) that the new use doesn’t conflict with their trademark term SPAM. So they’ve published a statement saying that they don’t mind people calling unsolicited commercial e-mail “spam” as long as they leave it in lower-case letters to distinguish it from their trademark term “SPAM” (all caps).
This contrasts with the behavior of other corporations who have gotten really uptight when people started using their terms in new ways. Some (*cough* Lucas, *cough* Disney, *cough* Xerox) have become distinctly prickly and sometimes even sued or threatened lawsuits when people wanted to do things like . . . oh . . . apply the term “Star Wars” to the Strategic Defense Initiative or the term “Mickey Mouse” to inferior or poorly-thought-out things and ideas or “Xerox” to photocopying done on something other than a machine made by the Xerox corporation.
So three cheers for Hormel and their being such great guys about the new use of “spam.”
Makes me want to go out and buy a can of SPAM.
(Which, incidentally, works great on the Atkins Diet.)
They’ve got quite a sense of humor. They have a SPAM museum in Austin (MN) and the billboards advertising it really poke fun at the product.
Jimmy,
The reason the Xerox people don’t like you to say you xeroxed a piece of paper is the same reason why the Jell-O people don’t want you to talk about a bowl of jello or Kimberly-Clark worries about your saying that your Kleenex is just a piece of kleenex. If your trademark passes into general use and it’s shown you haven’t aggressively “defended” it (why these companies buy ads in editors’ trade journals telling people to capitalize them and remember they’re trademarks), you can lose it. And Ricoh could start selling “xerox machines.” Or Puffs could be “Puffs kleenex.” Or what have you.
I think the most famous case of someone losing their trademark was “dry ice” which most people have no idea was originally a brand name.
Anyway, the trademarks are worth millions of dollars in many cases, and although I’m sure they’re linguistic realists like the rest of us at heart, the legal departments of those companies have to bend over backwards to make sure that those millions of dollars don’t evaporate like a big block of, say, Dry Ice®.
I understand that the reason they get so fiesty about this is that they think they’re protecting their brand name. I’m just pointing out that it’s a big hassle for everyone else, and I’m complimenting Hormel for taking a different and more easygoing tack.
I’d also question whether their brand name is really harmed by people using it in this way. If folks are buying “Puffs kleenex” during cold season, isn’t that free advertising for Kleenex, which can pitch itself next cold season as “the one, the only, the original”? I don’t know that this is the case, but at least it’s arguable.
A most interesting case along these lines was the 3M corporation, which created Post-It stickynotes. They realized that the word “stickynotes” was something they’d never be able to hang onto, so they released it knowing that it would become the generic product term, and created the second term “Post-It Notes” to be their brand name.
I compliment them, too. “Stickynotes” is too useful a term to be locked into one brand.
“I think the most famous case of someone losing their trademark was ‘dry ice’ which most people have no idea was originally a brand name.”
The most shocking to me was aspirin, with Styrofoam as a close second. Here’s an amazing list of trademarks that have crept or are creeping into “genericide.”
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Genericized_trademark
Like Jimmy, I also give kudos to Hormel for seeing the writing on the wall and coming up with a good solution.
Slightly OT, but this brings back memories of a Holy Week a few years ago when I had got up early and was reading the Morning Office, and came across this verse in Psalm 19a:
“No speech, no word, no voice is heard
yet their span extends through all the earth,
their words to the utmost bounds of the world.”
Being still somewhat groggy and unfocused I first misread “span” as “spam.” And the curious thing was that it made perfect sense either way.
I’d also question whether their brand name is really harmed by people using it in this way. If folks are buying “Puffs kleenex” during cold season, isn’t that free advertising for Kleenex, which can pitch itself next cold season as “the one, the only, the original”? I don’t know that this is the case, but at least it’s arguable.
It’s arguable, but the people who possess the trademarks seem to believe very strongly that it’s not going to help their sales, hence the massive efforts to protect the trademarks. I’d bet they’d admit that sub rosa they’d admit that the product’s identification with the generic class of object probably has some positive effect. But, of course, if all tissue paper is kleenex, then Kleenex is just tissue paper (which, of course, literally it is…). But they’ve invested millions of dollars in the product which bears the name, and ergo invested in the name.
I think their reasoning is roughly akin to what yours might be if I and my crew of toothless hillbilly moonshiners cranked out a line of ignorant, ill-informed pamphlets we decide to call JIMMY AKIN’S ‘POLOGETICKIZIN’S, you might well feel that we’re using your good name to sell our junk. And if the public rightly discerns that JIMMY AKIN’S ‘POLOGETICKIZIN’S are bad, they might well look at a genuine Jimmy Akin™ book and think, “Eh, more of that crazy stuff where they say the Father is the molasses, the Son is the yeast, and the Holy Spirit is corn squeezin’s.”
Loopy analogy, I know. (Although maybe we can make akins the generic term for apologetic tracts, if we work at it!) Oh, and I’m all for Hormel’s decision. Makes perfect sense.