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