But it took a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to conclude no one is going to confuse a squeaky plastic dog toy with a “Bad Spaniels” label with the whiskey marketed by Jack Daniel’s.
In a new ruling, the three-judge panel did not dispute that the toy, marketed by an Arizona company, looks like a bottle of the famous Tennessee whiskey.
But the judges said nothing about the sale of the product, clearly meant to be a parody, tarnishes the reputation of Jack Daniel’s. And that, they decided, means the liquor company doesn’t have a legal paw to stand on to try to keep the toy off the market.
