“This case is about dog toys and whiskey, two items seldom appearing in the same sentence,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in an opinion for the court.
on Thursday gave whiskey maker Jack Daniel’s reason to raise a glass, handing the company a new chance to win a trademark dispute with the makers of the Bad Spaniels dog toy.for a unanimous court, Justice Elena Kagan was in an unusually playful mood. Observers who watched her read a summary of the opinion in the courtroom said at one point she held up the toy, which squeaks and mimics the whiskey’s signature bottle.
Arizona-based VIP Products has been selling its Bad Spaniels toy since 2014. It’s part of the company’s Silly Squeakers line of chew toys that mimic liquor, beer, wine and soda bottles. They include Mountain Drool, which parodies Mountain Dew, and Heini Sniff’n, which parodies Heineken beer. Jack Daniel’s, based in Lynchburg, Tennessee, wasn’t amused. Its lawyers argued that the toy misleads customers, profits “from Jack Daniel’s hard-earned goodwill” and associates its “whiskey with excrement.”
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