of the pre-litigation alliteration dept
We’ve written about Buc-ee’s a few times lately, given the famed Southern supermarket chain’s aspirations to become the Monster Energy of convenience stores when it comes to mindless 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 seems to think that it somehow has the exclusive right to such images, which is clearly nonsense. Buc-ee’s also doesn’t seem to have any concept of parody and the protected status of parody.
But I guess if anyone wants to fight back against this kind of bullying, it might as well be an underwear company called Nut Huggers. Jarrad Hewett, owner of Nut Huggers Apparel, said yes I received a threatening letter from Buc-ee’s above his company’s logo.
Hewett said he received the letter weeks after achieving his most profitable sales month ever. His company focuses on underwear and clothing and uses 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 for a kind of tongue-in-cheek humor,” Hewett said.
After investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into his business and ultimately seeing it succeed, he said he was shocked when he received the letter from Buc-ee’s.
According to Hewett, Buc-ee has made a number of well-known claims that its company logo was trademark infringement due to its use of a “cartoon character” with “buck teeth” and that the company should refrain from using such images, along with “cartoons, rodents, baseball hats and the colors red, yellow and brown.” Hewett was also instructed to use images only on the front.”
And that, my friends, is complete nonsense. Buc-ee’s has no authority to impose these general requirements. Thanks to his trademark, he doesn’t have a monopoly on these types of generic images. And to make matters worse, even after Hewett wrote back agreeing to change his logo and remove the specific colors that Buc-ee objected to, Buc-ee refused to meet him halfway and insisted that he would comply with every demand it made.
And now here are the logos in question.
Buc-ee’s:
And Nut Huggers clothing:
They are not comparable. They don’t have the same overall color scheme. It’s not the same animal. Both logos feature each company’s name prominently. In terms of products, they are not in the same market categories. And variations on the Nut Huggers logo don’t really come substantially closer to the Buc-ee’s logo.
And for those reasons, Hewett plans to fight.
“I think it’s time for someone to stand up and say, this is not right. There is no infringement here,” Hewett said. “Not all of you have the right to do this and take away people’s local livelihoods.”
I fear I may have no choice but to write a lot 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, confusion, rodents, brand
Companies: buc-ee’s, nut huggers
#Nut #Huggers #Apparel #plans #fight #Bucees #bullying