Jack Daniel's argues VIP Products infringed on its trademarks and trade dress with its 'Bad Spaniel' dog toy line.
A clash between Jack Daniel's whiskey and a pet company selling a poop-themed dog chew toy landed before the Supreme Court on Wednesday as the justices wrestled with when a parody of an iconic brand crosses the line from First Amendment protected speech into a trademark infringement.involves a line of dog toys, called"Bad Spaniels," made by Arizona-based VIP Products.
A bottle of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey is displayed next to a Bad Spaniels dog toy in Arlington, Virginia, on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022."Jack Daniel's loves dogs and appreciates a good joke as much as anyone," lawyers for the company told the Supreme Court in a filing."But Jack Daniel's likes its customers even more, and doesn't want them confused or associating its fine whiskey with dog poop.
"In our popular culture, iconic brands are another kind of celebrity. People are constitutionally entitled to talk about celebrities and yes, even make fun of them," Bennett Cooper, who argued on behalf of VIP Products, told the Supreme Court."VIP uses a pretend trademark and pretend trade on a pretend label on a pretend bottle full of pretend contents," Cooper wrote in a brief filed with the court."It is all a fiction — that is the parody.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson questioned Cooper's argument that the Bad Spaniels toy is an expression that receives First Amendment protection. "Even though the standard ordinarily for trademark violations in what Congress cared about is people putting things into the marketplace that confuse consumers into believing that it's from the mark holder or sponsored by the mark holder, if it's an expressive thing, then we don't really have to do that," Jackson said of the approach from the dog toy company.
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