SPAM - what's in my name?

Hormel Foods , a company selling canned meat products under the SPAM trademark, was unable to register its brand for use in the European Union, Reuters reports.

There is nothing surprising in this, of course. Today, only the owners of Hormel Foods can naively believe that the name SPAM stands for SPiced hAM or, more simply, ham with spices. At the Office for Harmonization of the Internal Market of the European Union (OHIM), where Hormel Foods addressed with the intention to register a trademark, we are sure that spam is nothing more than an unauthorized message that arrives via email.