Supreme Court justice draws laughs during hearing on Jack Daniel's trademark infringement

Now to our booze news. Hmm. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Well done. The late night, I'll see you then. If you're a regular viewer of See It and Tonight, you know we bring you the latest Jack Daniels news. Exclusively.

Exclusively, and tonight is no different. But this time, it involves the Supreme Court. Lawyers for the whiskey maker Jack Daniels are suing the makers of a doggie chew toy called Bad Spaniels, claiming the chew toy. We also have sound effects. Claiming the chew toy violates their trademark. For some reason, the Supreme Court justices found this funny. Tewit, what is the parody here? The parody? Yeah.

The parody is. Maybe I just have no sense of humor, but. Ha-ha-ha-ha. What's the parody? The parody is multi-fold, but the testimony indicates, and it's not been disputed, that the parody is to make fun of marks that take themselves seriously. Well, I mean, you say that, but you make fun of a lot of marks. Doggie Walker, Dose Peros, Smella Arpa, Canine Cola, Mountain Druler, all of these companies taking themselves too seriously? Yeah, yes. Ha-ha-ha.

All right, so here are the products. So I'm sure you all recognize Jack Daniels. I've never seen that. What you're talking about. I've been out with you. And then a chew toy looks like this. So do you think, Essie, this is violating, this is trademark? Yes, and I don't want to be the wet blanket on this panel.

What? Because this is funny. But trademark law is really important. And it protects IP, and I think absolutely, they're trying to parody a brand, but in the process, I think they're damaging the brand, and that is the argument. Yeah. Listen, if the parody doesn't damage the brand a little bit, it's not a good parody. That's the whole point of parody, and that's why you have the exception for parody. So I think I.

Well, that's what they're considering, the exception for parody. I don't drink alcohol, and I don't have a dog, so this really doesn't apply to me, but I just think in general that, you know, chill out. Unless you can prove that you lost some sales, then. Well, here, maybe this will change your thinking. Moshe, I'll put this to you. It says Jack Daniels' product is 40% alcohol by volume. Bad Spaniel's toy is said to be 43% poo.

Now you want to rethink that reputational asset. I stand by my. You know what I found so interesting about this? Well, first of all, one of the only good things that came out of COVID was that we have now audio livestream from the Supreme Court, so we're able to listen in on these people. Now, the day probably will never come that we have video of them. Hopefully. Hopefully not. Because that'll just change how the Supreme Court acts, and they'll be acting for the camera, et cetera.

But it's great to be able to hear them, and you're like, oh, these are the people making important decisions. What was also very fascinating in this time of a 6-3 conservative liberal split and left, right, et cetera, was you had a couple interesting alliances in terms of the discussions. You had Alito and Sotomayor, who were very much on your take, being like, come on. Come on. Really, Jack Daniels? Seriously? And then you had Gorsuch and Kagan, who are like, we don't get involved in this. Well, more like I see, but can we kick this to a lower court? But you had these interesting conservative liberal matchups. Again, you could hear in their tone, not just the transcript.

And so it's hard to predict how this will go, but it seemed like, I don't know, generally speaking, I'll be surprised by if Essie's ruling comes into effect. I totally agreed that it was interesting to hear them, because we got to hear some Supreme Court humor there. They were really yucking it up, Congressman. So, first off, one owner of a dog named Baxter tells me that they received this chew toy specifically, and the dog hated it. The bad part. Important data points. It's an important data point.

Secondly, I would agree with Essie on the legal analysis. It's a lot of work to go through, you know, the trademark. There's a reason why we have this trademark law in place. There is an impact on the brand. And I think that Jack Daniels will likely be successful. We'll see where it goes. I mean, guys, obviously, if we're going to talk anymore about this, we really would have to do a deeper dive.

I agree with the talk. And do some research. Research into the product. You'll be following the story. I will be following the story. I should tell everyone that's actually the second bottle for the night for us. I believe it.

All right, thank you all very much. There may be drinks during the commercial break. I don't know. We'll see.