3 ms·
To wildly generalize, my understanding is that one of the (legal) components for parody is that you need to be actually commenting on the thing you're parodying
by kemayo 3y ago
To wildly generalize, my understanding is that one of the (legal) components for parody is that you need to be actually commenting on the thing you're parodying. Just referencing something that exists in pop culture doesn't mean it's protected parody.
I.e. this dog toy wasn't saying anything about Jack Daniels. It was just a dog toy that looked like a dog-poop themed bottle of Jack Daniels. If it was part of some general message of "Jack Daniels is dogshit", I believe that it'd have been unambiguously protected.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- simiones 3y agoThe SC actually decided something else. They decided that you can't defend your product's only branding as parody, whatever form it takes. If something is your trademark, you have to defend it from being an infringement of someone else's trademark solely on the basis of customer confusion (i.e. prove that the accuser is wrong in saying that their customers would buy your products in confusion). You can use someone else's trademarks in your parody, but only if that parody is branded differently (e.g. the Barbie Girl song was not branded using Barbie logos, it was using AQUA's logos).