Nut Huggers Apparel Plans To Battle Back Against Bullshit Buc-ee’s Bullying
from the alliteration-before-litigation dept
We’ve written about Buc-ee’s a couple of times recently, given the famed convenience store chain of the south’s aspirations to become the Monster Energy of convenience stores when it comes to nonsense trademark bullying. Buc-ee’s has gone after all kinds of other companies, almost always for the crime of having a cartoon animal in their logos. The company appears to think that it somehow has the exclusive right to such imagery, which is obviously bullshit. Buc-ee’s also appears to not have any concept of parody and parody’s protected status.
But I suppose if anyone is going to fight back against this sort of trademark bullying, it might as well be an underwear company called Nut Huggers. Jarrad Hewett, ownder of Nut Huggers Apparel, said he received a threat letter from Buc-ee’s over his company’s logo.
Hewett said he received the letter weeks after having his most profitable month of sales on record. His company focuses on underwear and apparel, using a patent to redesign the inside of its underwear to accommodate more active people. Hewett said he came up with his logo, which features a cartoon squirrel holding two acorns.
“We went with kind of tongue-in-cheek humor,” said Hewett.
After sinking hundreds of thousands of dollars into his business and finally seeing it succeed, he said he was shocked to get the letter from Buc-ee’s.
Now, according to Hewett, Buc-ee’s made some very familiar claims that his company logo was trademark infringement for using a “cartoon character” with “buck teeth” and that the company must refrain from using such imagery as that, along with “cartoons, rodents, baseball hats, and the colors red, yellow, and brown. Hewett was also instructed to only use front-facing images.”
And that, dear friends, is complete and utter bullshit. Buc-ee’s has no standing to make those general demands. Its trademark affords it no monopoly on those generic types of images. And, to make it all the worse, even after Hewett wrote back agreeing to alter his logo to remove the specific colors Buc-ee’s objected to, Buc-ee’s refused to meet him half way and insisted he comply with every single demand it had made.
And, now, here are the logos in question.
Buc-ee’s:
And Nut Huggers Apparel:
Those are not similar. They’re not the same overall color scheme. They’re not the same animal. Both logos prominently feature the name of each business. They’re not in the same market categories in terms of products. And variations of the Nut Huggers logo aren’t really substantially closer to the Buc-ee’s logo.
And for those reasons, Hewett plans to fight.
“I think that it’s time that somebody stands up and says, this isn’t right. There’s no infringement here,” said Hewett. “You all don’t have the right to be doing this and take away people’s local livelihoods.”
I fear I may have no choice but to write much more about this in the future, if only because a trademark dispute between a nut-hugging squirrel and a beaver practically writes itself.
Filed Under: buck teeth, likelihood of confusion, rodents, trademark
Companies: buc-ee's, nut huggers
Comments on “Nut Huggers Apparel Plans To Battle Back Against Bullshit Buc-ee’s Bullying”
Too many lawyers...
…not enough to do.
Buc-ee’s board of directors might want to look into how much they are spending on their legal department and/or retainers and then compare it to how well they are being legally protected, minus loss created by ill will due to things like this.
I’ve never been able to take that outfit remotely seriously. Even the company name looks, at best, like it was the result of some drooling suit headbutting a keyboard mid-binge and calling it a day.
I feel like it’s time for some kind of anti-SLAPP law but for trademarks and patents. I don’t really see any way for us to “fix” the laws/system though — lawyers I imagine will always do bullshit like this.
Animals are national symbols. Why should one corner store corner them?
If anyone should own the depictions of beavers as commercial trademarks, I’d think that the Hudson’s Bay Company (1670-2025) or its successors, or perhaps the Dominion of Canada (1 Jul 1867-) would have a claim, along with any of the provinces built on portions of Rupert’s Land.
What would be the reaction if Canadian Tire were to start trademarking bald eagles to prevent the US from using them?
Overbroad.
hiding
Usually you find something horrific when a company starts suing this way.
What DOES Buc’ees have to hide? have they murdered babies with toxic baby formula? killed people with peanut allergies?
SOMETHING is going on in there and this is the attempted distraction.
After all we now know the terrible things Monster Energy didn’t want to become public knowledge and thought bullying other companies would somehow cover the bigger much worse issues.
See I think layers and cos should get a bullet to the face for this.
If they had to put their life on the line they wouldn’t file such garbage.
Nuts.
In the words of a WW2 era General faced with pressure from a bully: “Nuts.”
Nut huggers has a much better case than Born United, who were committing obvious and blatant infringement and claiming that putting the Buckees logo into a military uniform was ‘parody’, when there were no clear elements of parody to the illegitimate use of the logo.
In this case, the logos are not similar, not even a little, and rather than attempting to claim ‘parody’ in a clearcut case of NOT parody, they’re claiming ‘sufficent difference’ which… well, an ordinary citizen can tell the difference between the buckees beaver and the Nut Huggers squirrel, and if that’s NOT a beaver than Buckees needs to fire their artist.
Heck, a moron in a hurry can tell the difference. (Morning Star Cooperative Society v Express Newspapers Limited [1979] FSR 113)
Why is parody relevant?
“Buc-ee’s also appears to not have any concept of parody and parody’s protected status.”
Why even bring it up? It seems far simpler because they compete in completely disjunct segments of the market. The underwear company doesn’t open massive interstate gas stations, and… ok, I may be the last Texan who has never been inside of a Buc’ees, but I don’t think they sell underwear, certainly not suggestive risque underwear. How it would lead to market confusion is a mystery.
Re:
Because Born United is pretending that putting the buckees mascot into military camouflage fatigues is somehow ‘parody’ and not ‘using your mascot to sell our stuff, which its marketed to gravy seals’
And Techdirt, for all that I love them, refuse to side with the copyright holders in clear cases where they’re specifically in the right, if the holder is habitually in the wrong.
in my view if a company makes a trandemark claim this outrageous they should lose t heir trademark
Re:
Or how about disbarring the lawyers for bringing cases like this to court?
Yes, I know lawyers are almost obligated to file any cases their clients want, but at some point they should realize these companies have logos that are completely different.
In turn, this means copyright lawyers are taking money from the client knowing there’s no case.