Buc-ee’s Sues Parody Apparel Shop For Parodying Its Brand
from the dammed-if-you-do dept
A couple of weeks back, we discussed famed southern convenience store chain Buc-ee’s and its penchant for initiating all kinds of trademark related threats and lawsuits. While we talk about this sort of thing a lot around here, the company’s actions have been particularly silly. When taken in sum total, you’re left with the idea that Buc-ee’s seems to think that it is the only company involved in the food and/or drinks business that is allowed to have a cartoon animal as its logo. Think I’m exaggerating? The company argued that its beaver logo looked too similar to that of an alligator. And a chicken. And a guy eating a hotdog.
Well, the company is still at it, but at least it’s a tad bit closer to trademark reality in this instance. That said, its latest lawsuit is still likely to run into a significant challenge, after it went after an apparel store that specifically sells clothes that parody brands.
The Texas-based Buc-ee’s filed the suit against Born United.
Buc-ee’s operates a chain of travel centers and convenience stores across nine states, including South Carolina. A “significant and growing portion” of the company’s business involves making, distributing and selling clothing prominently featuring the Buc-ee’s trademarks, the lawsuit, filed last Tuesday, states.
Born United sells clothing and other merchandise bearing patriotic themes and slogans and operates under the slogan, “Bringing brands together that stand for freedom,” the suit alleges. Court documents state it offers its own private label products as well as merchandise from third-party brands like Grunt Style, Palmetto State Armory, Nine Line Apparel, and others.
And here is an example of one of the parody images in question.
In the MSN post, the owner of Born United is quoted saying that they love Buc-ee’s and would be willing to discuss their concerns. That flies in the face of the store’s failing to respond to a C&D Buc-ee’s sent, as well as comments from a minority owner named Tom Fernandez, who also happens to be a state senator in South Carolina.
Now, nobody is attempting to claim that Born United didn’t use a large portion of the Buc-ee’s logo and branding in its shirts, of course. Instead, the store used a portion of that branding, added to it to make a parody that aligned with the store’s values, and then sold them in its own storefront. That reads like fairly clear parody to this writer, but it is also undeniably the case that this sort of use is unlikely to confuse anyone into thinking that Buc-ee’s has somehow gotten into the business of creating a gun-toting version of its beaver in military garb. Combine that with the Born United name being prominently displayed and any such concern gets even more silly.
It sounds like Born United is prepared to fight this out. Having a sitting state senator on your side probably doesn’t hurt either. Perhaps the beaver finally bit off more than it can chew.
Filed Under: parody, trademark
Companies: born united, buc-ee's
Comments on “Buc-ee’s Sues Parody Apparel Shop For Parodying Its Brand”
This could get bad.. in the most amusing way possible..
Imagine this inspires more people to create their own trademarked beaver doing non-company approved things material in protest
And nevermind the real artists and designers…especially the furry artists
We have AI image generators now..
Those can make that beaver do anything,,,at scale..
Streisand, Meet Rule 34
They might need some industrial grade eye bleach over at Buc-ee’s main office…
Let’s hope so, and if not, I pray its favorite weapon gets taken away from it.
Is there any way they can BOTH lose? Their BS is deep enough to bury them both, so why not?
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There’s a way for neither of them to ‘win’, but not a way for both to ‘lose’ unfortunately.
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Parody, according to the law
The thing everyone forgets about parody is that when you parody another company/person’s stuff… your parody has to be commentary ON THAT THING to be protected. I actually don’t know enough about either of these companies to say definitively what’s going down, but here’s two hypotheticals for the shown images with completely different legal outcomes:
The thing to remember is that Fair Use–for both copyright and trademark–is an affirmative defense against the the law that was definitely broken. They are definitely breaking trademark law. Now, they need to prove that what they did falls into one of the narrow trademark fair use categories, and a lot of that comes down to intent.
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Nope, nothing in the law to say trademarks can’t be parodied. Search “Chewy Vuitton” if you don’t believe me.
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This doesn’t look like a parody.
They put the beaver with the words born united, and a gun. It’s not transformative and it’s definitely not clearly parody.
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TIL: Putting a well-known image into a different context by putting other things with it isn’t transformative in any way. I guess your understanding of the law is so piss-poor that it’s the sole reason you’re not in government with the rest of the MAGA faithful.
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Dunno why you think saying ‘It’s a parody’ post facto makes something a parody.
Lotta people, for example, say terrible shit, then say ‘it was a joke’, but that doesn’t actually make it a joke either.
Frankly, saying ‘It’s a parody’ in advance doesn’t necessarily make it a parody either.
I get that you’re a copyright minimalist who’s determined to interpret the rules around copyright as narrowly as possible for the copyright holders, but this is a very clear case of infringement by a moderate standard.
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Just because you don’t understand the satirical intent of Swift’s A Modest Proposal doesn’t mean it wasn’t excellent satire.
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Every accusation a confession. After all, you’re the one trying to interpret Fair Use as narrowly as possible, and you’re clearly on the side of the copyright/trademark owners, which I’m not in this case.
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Very clear discussion of the issue, and I would agree that it doesn’t feel like parody unless Buc-ee’s has a military arm I’m unaware of. Since the logo was lifted exactly, I find it confusing as a random civilian.
I’m not sure that’s true at all. Just speaking for myself there is nothing in that example image that clearly indicates that Buc-ee’s didn’t support and/or license their mascot for this use (I’m sure having no idea who “Born United” is or, out of context, what that is even supposed to mean aids in explaining my confusion).
Would your same argument work with Donald Duck in a military uniform? I mean Disney has produced exactly those kinds of images / shorts. Further, slapping a different hat / clothing on a mascot is pretty common and, based on my brief search, looks like something Buc’ee’s has done. Combine that with Buc’ees being mostly in Texas and the southeast and I could pretty easily be convinced that many people would assume that they licensed their mascot for and support this message.
Eh. Frankly, I don’t think this counts as ‘Fair use’.
They’re selling the shirts for money, Buc-ees sells shirts too with the Buc-ees logo on them. Frankly, this is as bad as the ‘Calvin pissing on everything merchandise’
Also, the born united people look like crazy gross republiscum anyway.
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Shut up and do your research.
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Yeah? Putting a character into a gravy seals/meal team six cosplay is somehow magically automatically parody?
No. This is pretty obviously not ‘parody’. Sorry.
This is like producing a shirt with spider-man and your logo on it and selling it for money.
This doesn’t appear to be fair use.
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If you’d bothered to follow the link, you’d have seen the point AC was making, which is that making money on a parody doesn’t automatically preclude it from protection as a parody.
TL;DR: *whooooooooooosh!*
Declaring parody is not as simple as calling 'Base'
Loathe as I am to side with such a legal thug in this case I’m leaning towards Buc-ee’s as the other company seems to have just swapped out the clothing and kept the rest of the logo intact, such that I could see a valid case of customer confusion about whether the two are working together on the product.
Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go take a long shower to get the feeling of slime off my skin from defending such a terrible company…
Replace with Mickey Mouse
Replace the buc-ee’s mascot with Mickey Mouse. That’s the issue here, just a shitty fast food thingy instead of a household name.
Well
need to make a parody where a giant beaver is beating a smaller squirrel to death screaming “you look a bit like me!”
Tbh if I saw that logo on the Born United merch, I can see myself being a bit confused about whether this was an official joint product with Buccees, or something endorsed by them, or something. It’s the EXACT same design with the extra gear and words tacked on, and if it’s a commentary I’m not sure just what sort of commentary it is.
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‘We want money, give us money for this logo in tactical gear.’
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“I’ma copy your shit without changing any details about it and call it my shit.”
"Fairly clear parody"?
I clicked through the embedded link in “(specifically) sells clothes that parody brands,” expecting the article linked to paraphrase that statement, but I could find nothing in the linked article claiming Born United does in fact sell clothes that parody brands, whether specifically or otherwise. I feel like this is an important detail, both for the outcome of the legal case as well as for news media coverage.
Added to the fact that Buc-ee’s has a southern motif (which has a lot of overlap with conservatism, and from there military fetishism) and has been know to re-outfit their iconic beaver for various merchandising, when I saw the Born United apparel, as a lifelong Texan, I thought it was a piece of genuine Buc-ees merchandise and that Buc-ees had just decided to shift from dog whistling a conservative ideology to outright endorsing one. As I have never heard of Born United, I thought that was a tag line to accompany the beaver’s outfit switch rather than a company name, a tag line which would make perfect sense accompanyingthe outfit which I interpreted as support for the US military. Now that I have heard of BU as well as their slogan, “Bringing brands together that stand for freedom,” according to the suit as well as the fact that BU does sell some third party apparel, it seems even more to suggest that Buc-ees purposefully released this as officially licensed merchandise to support a political ideology.
I find nothing obvious or even detectable about the supposedly parodic nature of BU’s use of the beaver, unless it was clearly marked as such on a site that “specifically sells clothes that parody brands,” but I fail to see any evidence of that in either this article or the linked article and I’m not about to give their site any traffic.
I also disagree with the notion that it would be “silly” to genuinely think that a Texas-themed, Texas-based company would never produce merchandise supporting the US military, albeit in a tasteless fashion (have you been in a Buc-ees? Tasteless-ness IS their brand) simply because they (checks notes again) …uh, well, you didn’t say and I won’t put words in your mouth. I mean, you said it was parody but declined to explain how it meets the definition of parody, just stating that it’s “obvious.” Not sure why you didn’t explain why and instead chose to beg the question and circularly say that “mak[ing] a parody” is “fairly clear parody.” Okay, that isolated statement is a tautology, but what in what way was UB’s use of the beaver a humorous or satirical subversion of the regular Buc-ee’s logo? Literally at all, much less to a degree that would make a parodic interpretation “obvious”?