4 ms·
What if the Jack Daniels company had introduced a self-parodic dog toy called Bad Spaniels with the same design? Wouldn’t that actually be pretty good marketing
by jkaplowitz 3y ago
What if the Jack Daniels company had introduced a self-parodic dog toy called Bad Spaniels with the same design? Wouldn’t that actually be pretty good marketing for them? I think lots of whiskey-loving dog owners would buy that toy from Jack Daniels and be quite happy about it.
How would a casual observer distinguish that possibility from the true scenario, when the design was intentionally quite similar to the Jack Daniels design and a self-parody is not at all unlikely?
And if you accept that this isn’t easy to distinguish: if the third-party Bad Spaniels toy has some safety problem that causes dogs or small kids to suffer and requires a recall, wouldn’t that unjustly hurt the reputation of Jack Daniels for anyone who does get confused as to the origin of the product?
Makes sense to me that they’d care. This kind of thing is the whole point of trademark law.