No joke: Supreme Court case could take a big bite out of the First Amendment | The Hill

The court system often is where humor goes to die. For those seeking to use satire or parody of corporations, jokes often run into trademark or other lawsuits and result in a little more than ha, ha, thump.

The same bad audience could await the defendant in Jack Daniel s Properties Inc. v. VIP Products LLC. The Supreme Court just accepted a case involving a tongue-in-cheek dog chew toy made to resemble a Jack Daniel s whiskey bottle. VIP prevailed in defending the toy as protected speech, but the distiller wants the Supreme Court to declare such parodies to be trademark violations.

The docket this term is actually a hoot of parody cases.

Another pending case is Novak v. City of Parma, in which Anthony Novak was prosecuted for posting a parody of the website of his local police department. He was charged with (and later acquitted of) a felony under an Ohio law prohibiting the use of a computer to disrupt or interrupt police functions.

via thehill.com