John Oliver Dares Buc-ee’s To Sue Him Over Trademark Infringement
from the double-dog-dare dept
I will admit it’s always a special kind of fun when a topic we cover here at Techdirt gets the John Oliver treatment. He and his writing team generally gets things right, which helps. And I’m not saying that Oliver and his crew are definitely Techdirt readers, but, well, hi John and crew!
Readers here will recall that I’ve spent the last year or so pointing out that famed gas station and/or supermarket chain, Buc-ee’s, has become the trademark bullying Monster Energy of gas stations. This is a company that doesn’t seem to understand what parody is, and which somehow believes that it alone owns the right to use a cartoon animal, or sometimes human, in a circular logo for any kind of related business to its own.
Well, Oliver dedicated a segment to Buc-ee’s bullying ways on his show this past week and he did not disappoint.
In recent years, it sued Super Fuels in Dallas, whose logo was a brown dog sporting a red cape, a drive-through liquor store in Missouri named Duckees featuring a cartoon duck wearing sunglasses, Choke Canyon Travel Center in Texas over its cartoon alligator wearing a cowboy hat, and Nut Huggers, an Oklahoma-based underwear company with a mascot of a squirrel.
Oliver accused the chain of “outright bullying,” noting that most of the stores have changed their logos because they do not have the resources to fight the Texas giant, which operates more than 50 stores.
And that’s where the real fun starts.
Now, it would be absolutely stupid for Buc-ee’s to actually sue Oliver and HBO over this. The PR would be terrible, it would only give Oliver more attention and generate more headlines about the company being a trademark bully, and it would make the company look very thin-skinned and childish. I’m also relatively certain that’s exactly what will happen.
After all, any such lawsuit wouldn’t even rank in the top 3 of stupid trademark suits that Buc-ee’s has filed. And since they’ve demonstrated that they just can’t help themselves, I imagine we’re going to get more segments about this on Oliver’s show.
Filed Under: john oliver, trademark, trademark bullies
Companies: buc-ee's, hbo
Comments on “John Oliver Dares Buc-ee’s To Sue Him Over Trademark Infringement”
Come on Fuc-ees, sue Oliver!
Probably someone who will actually duke it out in court, too.
i wonder if at some time in the distant future this culture will figure out they are wastingmoney and that the insane level of unearned control isn’t doing them any good. lol what am i thinking?
Re: The public doesn't get a say.
You’re not considering the people profiting off the wasted money would want to see it continue.
Buc-Off
indeed, will love to see this one play out
I’m confused. I wanted dry, lukewarm ribs, but all I got was an owl speaking British.
I just love John Oliver, really. If I were him I’d feature the logo for a few more shows and keep mocking these freaking morons. I hope he does.
I love that Oliver used the parody logo in commerce. They have to sue!
Don’t you think you’re being a bit hard on the Beaver?
Eat shit, Bob!
This would not be the first time someone tried to pick a legal fight with Mr. Oliver for mocking them. I suspect Buc-ee’s won’t croak within three years of their hypothetical case getting dismissed with prejudice, though.
We’ve had the War of the Rose.
Now we get the War of the Rodents.
How times change.
It’s a lose-lose situation situation for Buc-ee’s here. They can either take the show to court and lose (Last Week’s lawyers are top-tier), or they can do nothing, and have other defendants can point to it and say “this looks much more like your logo than ours does, and you didn’t sue them.”
They are now trying to sue a place near where I grew up, the “Beavers MiniMart” convenience store in Beavercreek Ohio, where the local high school, Beavercreek High School, once had Bucky the Beaver as a mascot for their football team, the Battling Beavers, their cheerleaders are called the Beaverettes and there’s pep squad called the Beaver Patrol. There’s concrete statues that are 6-8 feet tall, all over the city. The city loves it’s fuckin’ beavers. Buc-ee’s probably doesn’t know what’s about to happen to them. It wont be pretty. The city leans hard right and the family trees are straight as an arrow, so I don’t really give a shit what happens either way.