Hormel just sizzlin' over use of 'spam'

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Aug 4, 2003 | by JIM BAINBRIDGE

Hormel Foods is concerned that Spam's good name as a canned luncheon meat has been sullied by its continued use as a generic term for junk e-mail and they're ready to take their case into the legal frying pan.

Hormel has filed two legal challenges with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to stop Spam Arrest from using the name Spam; Hormel has held the trademark since 1937.

Spam Arrest, which specializes in blocking junk e-mail or "spam," filed papers to trademark its corporate name early this year. Hormel then sent the Seattle-based company a warning to drop the word "Spam." Spam Arrest refused.

"If you ask most people on the street, they're going to say junk e- mail as opposed to the luncheon meat as their first description of what spam is. I think they (Hormel) are overstepping their bounds," said Brian Cartmell, Spam Arrest's CEO.

www.spam.com

www.spamarrest.com

Music downloads won't offset lost CD sales

Record companies can't rely on the growing market in online music downloads to offset losses created by declining CD sales, according to a new study. Research firm Jupiter Media has slashed its estimates for online sales in the United States this year to $800 million. Last year it predicted that legal downloads would generate revenues of $5.1 billion by 2007, but that figure has been reduced to $3.3 billion by 2008.

Despite the success of Apple's iTunes, with 6.5 million songs sold in three months, and a new crackdown on illegal file sharing, Jupiter estimates that digital sales will account for only 7 percent of the market in 2003.

www.jupitermedia.com

Secret Service works with police on ID theft

To help local police officers better understand and investigate identity-theft crimes, an electronic package was mailed out last week to more than 40,000 police departments and other law enforcement authorities by the Secret Service.

"If you're a victim of identity crime, you're not going to call a Secret Service agent; you're going to call your local police department," Richard Starmann of the Secret Service told The Associated Press. "What we were finding . . . was that the great majority of (departments) didn't really have the experience they needed to work this type of crime."

The materials include a 10-minute video that can be shown to officers during roll call meetings. In the video, law enforcers share their experiences in combating identity crimes and what works for them.

www.ustreas.gov/usss

Firmage pushes toward Net's next generation

Multimillionaire entrepreneur Joe Firmage last week acquired 3-D technology company Media Machines, the latest step in his effort to push the technology toward what he calls Web 2.0. The idea is to recycle ideas and technologies from the Web's past with a 3-D browser. Visitors to the ManyOne Networks site are advised "The Universe is Coming Online" and that plans to bundle educational content, ISP service and partnerships with nonprofit organizations will create a "PBS for the Internet" with 400,000 subject-focused portals.

www.manyone.net

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