The court system often is where humor goes to die. For those seeking to use satire or parody of corporations, jokes often run into trademark or other lawsuits and result in a little more than “ha, ha, thump.”

The same bad audience could await the defendant in Jack Daniel’s Properties Inc. v. VIP Products LLC. The Supreme Court just accepted a case involving a tongue-in-cheek dog chew toy made to resemble a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle. VIP prevailed in defending the toy as protected speech, but the distiller wants the Supreme Court to declare such parodies to be trademark violations. …

The distiller sued VIP over its introduction of the Silly Squeakers “Bad Spaniels” rubber squeaky toy. The toy is shaped like a whiskey bottle with a cartoon spaniel on the front and the caption: “Bad Spaniels, the Old No. 2, on your Tennessee Carpet.” On the back is a small disclaimer reading: “This product is not affiliated with Jack Daniel’s Distillery.”

That clearly was not enough for the distillery, which argued that people would be confused by the parody. While the district court originally ruled with Jack Daniel’s, it was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The chew toy was ruled (correctly, in my mind) to involve “new expressive content” and to be protected under the First Amendment.

[Courts usually give wide berth to satirical content. I was unpleasantly reminded last night, however, that Topps lost its case defending their Garbage Pail Kids parodies of Cabbage Patch Dolls. That seems to be on point here, although the History Channel review of the case didn’t indicate whether Topps pressed the case on appeal and set any precedent. — Ed]