The court system often is where humor goes to die. For those seeking to use satire or parody of corporations, jokes often run into trademark or other lawsuits and result in a little more than “ha, ha, thump.” The same bad audience could await the defendant in Jack Daniel’s Properties Inc. v. VIP Products LLC. The Supreme Court just accepted a case involving a tongue-in-cheek dog chew toy made to resemble a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle. VIP prevailed in defending the toy as protected speech, but the distiller wants the Supreme Court to declare such parodies to be trademark violations.