Fwd: SPAM - Without comment...

[Boris Groendahl <boris@well.com>]

---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------
Date:        07.08  03:38
Received:    07.10  09:37
From:        FringeWare News Network, email@Fringeware.COM
Reply-To:    jim@hosaka.SmallWorks.COM
             fringeware list, email@Fringeware.COM
CC:          Jim Thompson, jim@hosaka.SmallWorks.COM

Sent from: Jim Thompson  <jim@hosaka.SmallWorks.COM>

PHILADELPHIA (July 3, 1997 12:56 p.m. EDT)

 -- Spam, the nation's largest bulk e-mail company insists, is not
necessarily canned meat. Lawyers for Hormel Foods Corp., distributors of
the famous canned meat product, have asked Philadelphia-based Cyber
Promotions Inc. to stop using the name Spam. They have not filed a 
lawsuit.

Spam is slang for the practice of sending commercial e-mail in bulk. Cyber
Promotions founder Sanford Wallace, sometimes known as "Spamford," said 
the
company will continue using the word on its Internet site.

"The term 'spam' is part of the vocabulary of 25 million Internet users,"
said Wallace, who doubts it would be confused with the food. "We didn't
believe it's trademark infringement to use a slang word."

Last year, a federal court in New York rejected Hormel's trademark
infringement case against Jim Henson Productions for calling a pig-like
muppet "Spa'am" in a recent movie.

Wallace believes Spam became slang with a skit from the British comedy
group, Monty Python's Flying Circus. In that skit, the word is repeated
until one of the actors is driven crazy, he said.

Although Hormel officials want Cyber Promotions to stop using the word
Spam, they have not asked the company to stop using the term "spamming," a
slang word that denotes mass junk e-mailing.

"We want them to recognize that Spam has been a widely known Hormel Foods
trademark for 60 years and they are not authorized to use that trademark
for their commercial use," Hormel spokesman V. Allan Krjeci said in a
statement Thursday.

Hormel, based in Austin, Minn., has also asked Cyber Promotions to stop
displaying cans of Spam when promoting the bulk e-mail business.

- -- 
Jim Thompson / Smallworks, Inc. / jim@smallworks.com  
      512 338 0619 phone / 512 338 0625 fax
   "Hiroshima '45, Chernobyl '86, Windows '95"



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