What happens when the legally appropriate decision to protect a trademark creates a communications problem for the very brand you are trying to protect?

That is the question facing everyone’s favorite roadside beaver, Buc-ee’s. The popular travel-center chain, known for spotless restrooms, Beaver Nuggets, and its buck-toothed mascot, recently secured an $850,000 judgment and permanent injunction against a South Carolina retailer in a trademark dispute involving merchandise featuring a similar beaver character.

The South Carolina matter is one of more than two dozen federal trademark lawsuits Buc-ee’s has pursued in recent years. And the legal strategy makes sense. There is nothing unusual about a company protecting a valuable trademark. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office makes clear that trademark owners are responsible for enforcing their rights, and infringement can occur when unauthorized use creates a likelihood of confusion about a product’s source or sponsorship.

But that responsibility can create a second challenge — public relations concerns that linger outside the courtroom.

Buc-ee’s enforcement campaign has generated significant backlash. The Wall Street Journal highlighted criticism ranging from John Oliver’s “Buc-Off” parody merchandise and public challenge to the company, to local officials, small businesses, and community members rallying behind firms targeted by Buc-ee’s. The controversy has also spilled onto social media, where calls to #BoycottBucees have gained traction.

But Buc-ee’s is neither the first nor the last company that will confront this tension. Any company with a valuable, recognizable brand may eventually face the same tension: protecting a trademark while trying not to damage the reputation surrounding it.

That is when trademark counsel and the marketing team of branding, public relations, and crisis-management professionals need to be in the same room.

Legal is focused on protecting intellectual property, preventing consumer confusion, and preserving the strength of the mark. Brand professionals are considering how an enforcement action aligns with the organization’s identity, positioning, and relationship with its audiences. PR professionals are assessing how the action could be perceived by the media, customers, and other stakeholders to prepare for the reputational consequences if the dispute becomes public.

Legal Strategy and Communications Strategy Should Meet Earlier

The answer is not for marketing professionals to tell trademark counsel to stop enforcing intellectual property. Nor should PR concerns override a legitimate threat to an important mark.

The better answer is for legal, marketing, communications, and leadership to have the conversation before an enforcement decision becomes public.

A trademark attorney will appropriately ask questions about likelihood of confusion, dilution, the strength of the mark, precedent, and the consequences of failing to enforce.

The communications team should be asking different but complementary questions: How will the dispute look to customers? What happens when the cease-and-desist letter is posted on social media? Can we accomplish the legal objective without creating a reputational problem?

The legal and communications teams should weigh the following issues:

  • Assess the actual brand threat: Is there genuine consumer confusion, counterfeiting, lost revenue or reputational harm? How significant is the use relative to the overall strength and visibility of the brand?
  • Consider brand alignment: Does the proposed response reflect the organization’s established brand personality, values, and voice? A playful consumer brand, a luxury brand, and a highly regulated company may respond differently to similar situations.
  • Understand the audience: Consider how customers, employees, business partners, and other stakeholders are likely to perceive the action. Marketing intelligence and audience insight can help identify risks that may not be apparent from purely legal analysis.
  • Choose the least inflammatory effective remedy: Could quiet outreach, a phase-out period, coexistence arrangement, licensing discussion, modified branding, or narrowly tailored demand accomplish the objective?
  • Plan for the communications scenario: Assume the demand letter will be posted publicly. Would leadership be comfortable seeing it posted on social media or the media covering it? What is the holding statement if a reporter calls? What messages should be prepared for employees, customers or other stakeholders?
  • Consider the cumulative story: One enforcement action may look reasonable. Twenty similar disputes can become a narrative about the brand itself. Legal should know what marketing is seeing across media, social channels, and customer sentiment.
  • Monitor the response: Once an enforcement action becomes public, media coverage, social conversation and audience sentiment should be monitored so the organization can identify emerging issues and adjust its communications strategy when appropriate.

Trademark protection and reputation management should never be competing priorities. They are two parts of protecting the same business asset.

The Cease-and-Desist Letter Is a Communications Document, Too

Some brands have understood this extremely well.

When Jack Daniel’s objected to the cover of author Patrick Wensink’s Broken Piano for President, which closely resembled its famous label, its lawyers did not begin with scorched-earth threats. They politely explained the company’s need to protect its mark, asked that the cover be changed in future printing, and even offered to contribute toward redesign costs if the author changed it sooner. The letter went viral largely because of how reasonable it sounded.

Netflix took a similar approach when an unauthorized Stranger Things-themed pop-up bar appeared in Chicago. Its lawyers used jokes and references from the show, allowed the bar to complete its planned temporary run, and asked the operators to seek permission before doing anything similar again.

Faced with the trademark problem of consumers using VELCRO® as the generic name for hook-and-loop fasteners, Velcro Companies turned trademark education into a humorous marketing campaign. The campaign featured a music video in which a chorus of their lawyers humorously pleaded with consumers to stop using Velcro as a generic noun or verb and call the product “hook and loop,” turning a dry trademark-protection message into shareable brand content.

But there are cautionary examples as well, such as Buc-ee’s situation. Chick-fil-A’s effort to stop a Vermont artist from using “Eat More Kale” generated a three-year David-versus-Goliath story, an online petition with tens of thousands of supporters, and accusations of corporate bullying before the artist ultimately obtained his federal trademark. Louis Vuitton pursued My Other Bag over inexpensive parody totes and lost.

Trademark protection is intended to preserve brand value. If enforcement begins eroding goodwill, the organization needs to know that while decisions can still be calibrated—not after the litigation has become the brand story.

Protect the Mark and the Brand

There will be situations where aggressive enforcement is necessary, and communications concerns should not prevent a company from defending valuable intellectual property. But there will also be situations where the manner of enforcement matters almost as much as the decision to enforce. A carefully worded letter, a negotiated resolution, a sense of proportionality, or simply involving communications professionals before legal action becomes public can make the difference between a routine trademark matter and a reputational crisis.

That is why these conversations should happen early. Trademark counsel should understand the potential public narrative surrounding an enforcement decision, while branding, marketing and public relations professionals should understand the legal consequences of allowing potentially infringing uses to go unaddressed.

Working together, these disciplines can help leadership evaluate not only whether enforcement is warranted, but also how the organization should communicate, how the response aligns with the brand, how key audiences may react and how reputational risk should be managed.

The question is not whether a company should protect its trademark. It should. The better question is how to protect it without unnecessarily damaging the goodwill the trademark represents. Because ultimately, the goal is not to choose between protecting the mark and protecting the reputation.

Both are the brand.