Dog Days of Summer Hit Brown-Forman

This week saw the latest development in a 12-year legal battle between Brown-Forman and VIP Products, the maker of a novelty dog chew toy that looks like a bottle of Jack Daniels but makes all kinds of “poop jokes.”

It’s been a back-and-forth case with Brown-Forman winning twice in District Court in Arizona, losing twice at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, winning once before the United States Supreme Court, and maybe heading back to the Supreme Court.

In the recent Ninth Circuit loss for Brown-Forman, the court ruled that “Bad Spaniels is a ​parodic dog toy not intended for human consumption,” and disagreed with the District Court, holding instead that “There is ​no evidence in ⁠the record from which a court could reasonably infer that scatological references made on a dog toy have the same likelihood of generating disgust as identical references on a consumable product meant for humans might.”

The Ninth Circuit (some critics call it the “Ninth Circus”) has an 86% reversal rate by the Supreme Court, so perhaps we will see another appeal by Brown-Forman hoping for another reversal.

In the meantime, the real question might be whether it surprises anyone that a poop-themed dog chew toy venture is apparently so lucrative that it can go toe-to-toe against Brown-Forman for 12 years.

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