Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court.

I'm John Carlo Canoparo.

I'm Zach Smith.

And welcome to SCOTUS 101, where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

Welcome back to SCOTUS 101. The court heard oral arguments in a few noteworthy cases this week and handed down one opinion. Zach, can you start us

off with arguments? Sure thing. In light of our long interview this week, let's focus on two

oral arguments. The first is Coinbase v versus Bilski. It's an arbitration

case that will decide whether a district court must stay a case when a party files an interlocutory

appeal from the court's denial of a motion to compel arbitration. The second is Jack Daniels versus

VIP products. This is the trademark infringement case involving a dog toy that looks like a Jack

Daniels bottle with the text change to humorous, somewhat crude, dog-do-related phrases.

The question is, does this dog toy fall within the parity exception to the trademark laws?

Now, this was a fascinating oral argument.

The incomparable Lisa Black argued part of it, and I encourage everyone to go look at excerpts

from that transcript.

I think Lisa Black got away with argument techniques only Lisa Black could get away with.

But during oral argument, the justices seemed to have

fun with the case too, and Justice Elena Kagan admitted that she didn't get the joke. She said,

quote, maybe I just have no sense of humor, but where's the parody? To her, the dog toy was more

like a standard commercial product than a political t-shirt, a film,

or any other more expressive sort of item. On the other hand, justices Alito, Sotomayor,

and Jackson were concerned about the First Amendment implications of letting Jack Daniels put

...