SPAM descriptive of services to combat . . . well, spam

The Board of Appeals at the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market recently dismissed Hormel’s appeal of the denial to register the mark SPAM in connection with, among other things, services to avoid or suppress unsolicited emails.  Hormel unsuccessfully argued that "spam" does not enable the targeted public to detect immediately and without further reflection the description of a characteristic of the service in question.

Makes sense that "spam" can’t be registered in connection with services to combat spam.  But it seems that it takes a bit of a stretch to reject registration of the mark in connection with the class 36 services (economic consultancy, particularly in connection with network services) and class 42 services (creation and maintenance of computer software).  Although that makes me wonder, is Hormel actually going to be using the mark in connection with these services – seems a bit beyond the scope of what it does best, i.e., SPAM.

Funny thing I noticed at the top of the article – check out the Google ads.  They sure don’t help the argument that "spam" is not merely descriptive.