The toy is shaped like a whiskey bottle. The label says "Bad Spaniels" where you'd expect Jack Daniel's, and where the real bottle promises "Old No. 7 Brand Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey," the toy offers "The Old No. 2 on Your Tennessee Carpet." Alcohol content: "43% Poo by Vol." It squeaks. Your dog can chew it. It costs about as much as a sandwich.
It also generated one of the most consequential trademark rulings of the century — a unanimous Supreme Court decision that redrew the line between making fun of a brand and stealing from one.
A Company Built on Poking Fun
VIP Products, an Arizona dog toy maker, had been running its "Silly Squeakers" line for years: Mountain Drool instead of Mountain Dew, Heini Sniff'n instead of Heineken, Doggie Walker instead of Johnnie Walker. Most brands either ignored it or grumbled quietly. Jack Daniel's didn't. In 2014 the distillery demanded VIP stop selling Bad Spaniels — and VIP, instead of folding, went to court first, asking a judge to declare its toy perfectly legal parody.
That aggressive move set off nearly a decade of litigation, and the case swung like a pendulum the whole way up.
- 2014 — Jack Daniel's sends a demand letter; VIP sues first, seeking a declaration that Bad Spaniels is lawful parody.
- 2018 — Arizona federal court sides with Jack Daniel's: the toy infringes and tarnishes the brand.
- 2020 — The Ninth Circuit reverses, calling the toy an "expressive work" protected by the First Amendment.
- June 2023 — The Supreme Court rules 9–0 for Jack Daniel's, in an opinion by Justice Kagan that includes photos of the toy.
- 2025 — Back in the lower court, Jack Daniel's wins again: judgment that Bad Spaniels is likely to confuse consumers.
The Legal Shield That Almost Worked
VIP's defense rested on something called the Rogers test, a doctrine from a 1989 case involving Ginger Rogers. In short: when a trademark appears inside an artistic or expressive work — a film title, a song, a painting — courts mostly stay out of it, out of respect for free speech. A movie can mention Barbie; a song can name-drop Gucci. The Ninth Circuit decided a parody dog toy was an expressive work too, and waved it through.
If that reading had survived, it would have blown a hole in trademark law. Any product could dress itself up as commentary — slap a joke on the packaging and call it art.
The Supreme Court's answer was surgical. Parody is still allowed — the Court went out of its way to say so. But when you use someone else's mark as your own brand identity — as the name and look under which you sell your product — you don't get a free-speech shortcut. You face the ordinary question every trademark case turns on: are customers likely to be confused about who made this?
Why the Distillery Cared So Much
It's tempting to read the case as a humorless corporation punching down at a joke. Jack Daniel's saw it differently. The company has spent well over a century building what its lawyer called a reputation people associate with quality — and the toy tied that reputation, in the minds of shoppers walking past a shelf, to dog feces. Survey evidence in the case suggested a meaningful share of consumers thought Jack Daniel's had licensed or made the toy itself. That's the quiet danger of high-quality parody merchandise: the better it imitates the trade dress, the more people assume it's official.
There's also a slippery-slope logic that brand owners know well. Trademark rights erode when they go unenforced — tolerate a hundred parodies and the hundred-and-first infringer will cite them in court. It's the same instinct that drives Monster Energy's notoriously aggressive enforcement, though Jack Daniel's picked a fight it could actually justify.
What Changed After 2023
The ruling didn't kill brand parody — t-shirts, sketches, and commentary are as protected as ever. What it killed was the idea that selling a competing product under a parody of someone's mark is automatically free speech. Since the decision, courts have applied the narrower rule to everything from imitation sneakers to spoof consumer goods, and the case is now standard reading in trademark law courses — right alongside the MetaBirkins NFT verdict, decided the same year, which asked the same question about digital art.
For small businesses, the practical lesson cuts both ways. If you're tempted to build a product line on riffing off a famous brand, the safe harbor you may have heard about is far smaller than advertised — expect a cease and desist letter, and expect the confusion question to decide your fate. And if someone parodies your mark on a product they sell, you now have a much clearer path to stopping them.
FAQ
Who won Jack Daniel's v. VIP Products?
Jack Daniel's, unanimously. In June 2023 the Supreme Court held that the Rogers free-speech test doesn't apply when a parody is used as a source identifier — a brand — for the parodist's own products. On remand in 2025, the lower court found the Bad Spaniels toy likely to confuse consumers.
Is brand parody still legal after Bad Spaniels?
Yes. Commentary, art, and jokes about brands remain protected speech. The ruling narrowed one thing: using a parody of someone's trademark as the branding of a product you sell. That now faces the standard likelihood-of-confusion analysis, with parody weighed as one factor.
What was the Rogers test?
A doctrine from Rogers v. Grimaldi (1989) that shields trademarks used inside expressive works — film titles, songs, artworks — from most infringement claims. It still exists, but after Bad Spaniels it no longer covers marks used as the parodist's own product branding.