John Oliver, Buc-ee’s, and Who Gets to Call the Bluff?

What happens when a media company volunteers to become the trademark defendant

Despite having grown up in the Northeast and probably having stepped inside a Buc-ee’s once in my life, I have always been a fan of the chain from afar. Something about the giant cartoon beaver, incomprehensible amount of merchandise, and general commitment to making a gas station feel like a tourist attraction appeals to me. It is camp.

So when I saw that John Oliver had apparently decided to pick a fight with Buc-ee’s—and was actively asking the company to sue him—I was admittedly a bit shocked. Then I did my homework.

For context, Oliver’s original segment was not prompted by the lawsuit currently receiving the most attention. On July 26, he ended an episode of Last Week Tonight by examining Buc-ee’s history of trademark litigation, including disputes involving other businesses with cartoon-animal mascots. Some of those examples, Oliver acknowledged, involved similarities that were easier to understand. Others were considerably harder to look at without wondering exactly how much of the animal kingdom one travel-center chain could plausibly claim as its territory.

Oliver’s solution was characteristically restrained. He brought back Mr. Nutterbutter, the show’s seven-foot squirrel mascot, placed him inside deliberately Buc-ee’s-adjacent branding, and launched the “Buc-Off” shop, selling everything from shirts and hats to pajamas and underwear. Profits from the merchandise benefit Hunger Free America, but the possibility of litigation was also central to the joke. Oliver expressly pointed to something Last Week Tonight had that some of the businesses he had just discussed might not: the resources and willingness to fight back.

Two days later, Buc-ee’s did sue someone. Instead of John Oliver, though, the company filed a federal trademark action against Hanes Road Carryout, which operates Beaver’s Mini Mart in Beavercreek, Ohio. Buc-ee’s alleges that the store’s name, cartoon beaver, red branding, and overlapping convenience-store services are likely to create consumer confusion. Those allegations have not been adjudicated, and the case has not produced a merits decision

The story has only grown since. The Beavercreek community rallied around the Mini Mart, and Oliver announced in August that the Buc-Off shop would remain open beyond its original September closing date while Buc-ee’s continued pursuing the case. By then, he said the merchandise had raised nearly $500,000 for Hunger Free America. Buc-ee’s, meanwhile, had already indicated that it did not plan to sue Last Week Tonight.

I am not trying to predict how the Beaver’s Mini Mart case should end—or what would happen if Buc-ee’s changed course and sued Oliver tomorrow. What interests me is that Oliver did something fundamentally different from the defendants at the center of the story: he volunteered. 

Most trademark disputes begin because a rights holder identifies a use it believes crosses the line and chooses to challenge it. The recipient then decides whether to fight, settle, redesign, or walk away. Oliver essentially reversed that sequence. He looked at Buc-ee’s existing enforcement activity, deliberately created another use designed to attract its attention, attached that use to a media organization capable of funding a defense, and publicly asked the company to test its theory against him. 

While that does not change trademark law, I am curious what happens when the potential defendant is actually willing and able to invite the fight.

Asking to Be Sued

One of the most revealing things Oliver said after the segment had less to do with beavers than with lawyers. 

Discussing the stunt in an interview, he described a recurring difference of opinion between Last Week Tonight and its legal team. The lawyers, he joked, sometimes view their job as stopping the show from getting sued. Oliver views it as making sure that, when the show takes a risk worth taking, it is positioned to win. He was equally clear that even successful litigation carries substantial costs. His description of that process is worth reading in full.

I have heard people characterize legal review in media as restrictive: the lawyer as a cop for the company, checking stories, flagging risks, and telling the creator what cannot be said. Oliver’s description, on the other hand, shows how legal review can also make expression possible by helping creators assess risk and decide whether making a point is worth the potential fight.

With Buc-Off, Oliver did not accidentally wander into a trademark dispute while making a joke; the prospect of a claim was built into the joke from the beginning. This is significant because the threat of litigation can itself be a deterrent. A small business facing a federal trademark suit must consider not only whether it believes its logo is lawful, but also what it may cost to defend that position.

For a show backed by HBO, that calculation is obviously different. But so are the media incentives. If Buc-ee’s sued Last Week Tonight, the complaint itself could become new material. Oliver’s criticism is specifically about the company’s enforcement practices, meaning an effort to stop the parody could also become another event in the story he is telling.

Buc-ee’s decision not to sue does not mean it has conceded that Buc-Off is lawful. Buc-Off is also materially different from a convenience store using another animal mascot, so the company’s response to Oliver does not tell us how strong its claims are in those other cases.

From a media perspective, what makes Oliver’s approach unusual is that he folds legal into the segment itself.

When Recognition Is the Point

One legal wrinkle that makes Buc-Off more interesting than Oliver simply making fun of Buc-ee’s on television is that he put the joke on the merchandise. 

Trademark infringement generally turns on whether a challenged use is likely to confuse consumers about the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or approval of goods or services. That makes Buc-Off an interesting case study because the entire campaign depends on recognition. Mr. Nutterbutter is drawn in such a way that he is supposed to bring Buc-ee’s to mind. The Buc-Off logo is supposed to bring Buc-ee’s to mind, and its visual cues are intentionally familiar. Even the name tells the audience exactly which company Oliver is targeting.

That is also why Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC (2023) is useful here. The case involved “Bad Spaniels,” a squeaky dog toy designed to resemble a Jack Daniel’s bottle while replacing the whiskey’s familiar language with dog-related jokes. In 2023, the Supreme Court held that when challenged branding is being used as a source identifier for the defendant’s own goods, calling the product a parody does not automatically remove it from ordinary trademark analysis. The Court did not, however, decide that Bad Spaniels actually infringed Jack Daniel’s marks.

The case continued after remand. The district court ultimately found no likelihood of confusion, and this August, the Ninth Circuit rejected the company’s remaining dilution-by-tarnishment claim. By then, the dispute had worked its way through more than a decade of federal litigation.

I like Jack Daniel’s here because it resists an overly clean rule: parody does not automatically defeat a trademark claim, but deliberately referencing a brand does not automatically establish one either. 

Starbucks adds another layer because, like Buc-ee’s, it has a documented history of actively policing a highly recognizable mark. In Starbucks Corp. v. Wolfe’s Borough Coffee, Inc. (2013), the Second Circuit noted as a stipulated fact, “Starbucks actively polices the Starbucks Marks, demanding that infringing uses be terminated and, where necessary, commencing litigation.”

The case involved Wolfe’s Borough Coffee, Inc., a small New Hampshire coffee roaster doing business as Black Bear Micro Roastery, which sold “Charbucks Blend” and “Mister Charbucks.” Starbucks demanded that Black Bear stop using the names and sued in 2001. More than a decade later, the Second Circuit affirmed the denial of an injunction on the federal dilution-by-blurring claim.

The survey evidence caught my attention. When respondents heard the word “Charbucks” in isolation, 30.5% said Starbucks was the first thing that came to mind. But when asked what company or store might offer a product called Charbucks, only 3.1% answered Starbucks.

The final appeal involved dilution rather than the likelihood-of-confusion standard that governs infringement, so those percentages do not tell us how a Buc-Off case would come out. What they do show is that a strong mental association with a famous brand can exist without consumers necessarily identifying that brand as the source of the product.

That distinction feels particularly relevant to Buc-Off. Oliver plainly wants the merchandise to call Buc-ee’s to mind; otherwise, the joke would not work. But unlike a product that simply appears on a shelf, Buc-Off was introduced by Oliver on Last Week Tonight as part of an explicit criticism of Buc-ee’s trademark enforcement.

For viewers who encountered the merchandise through the segment, the context makes clear that Oliver is behind the parody and Buc-ee’s is its target. While that does not resolve what every consumer would think (particularly if someone encountered the merchandise without that context), it does make this a very different factual situation from one in which the source of a similar-looking product is less obvious.

And that’s just one way Oliver changes the equation.

The Defendant as the Storyteller

One of the cases Oliver discussed helps reveal why.

Earlier this year, Buc-ee’s sued Mickey’s, an Ohio convenience-store chain whose branding includes a smiling moose. Buc-ee’s alleged that elements of Mickey’s branding were confusingly similar to its own. Mickey’s denied the claims and countered, memorably, that “a moose is not a beaver.” At a court-ordered settlement conference on September 15, the parties reached a confidential settlement.

There is nothing unusual about settling a lawsuit, but it means there is no judicial opinion telling us whether Mickey’s actually infringed Buc-ee’s trademarks.

The settlement does not tell us why either side chose to resolve the case. More broadly, though, a smaller company can believe it has a strong defense and still decide that the cost of continuing through federal litigation makes settlement the more practical option.

Oliver’s comments make clear that Last Week Tonight considered the risk of litigation when pursuing Buc-Off. He later described the tension with the show’s legal team this way: they may want to prevent the program from being sued, while he views their role as making sure the show can win when it decides a potential lawsuit is worth the point it wants to make. He was also careful to acknowledge that winning does not make litigation free. His comments about that process are especially revealing here.

Then there is the second difference: if Buc-ee’s did sue, the dispute itself could become part of Last Week Tonight. Oliver’s criticism is specifically about the way Buc-ee’s enforces its trademarks, so a complaint against him would do more than create legal costs. It would generate another development in the exact story he set out to cover—and give a television show built around commentary and follow-up reporting new material to work with.

None of that tells us how a court would decide a hypothetical Buc-ee’s case against Oliver, but it helps explain why the same threat can operate differently depending on who receives it. Smaller businesses may decide that settling is more practical than paying to litigate a trademark dispute to the end. Oliver, backed by a major media company and a show built around commentary, is in a better position to keep fighting, and to make the fight itself part of the story.