The corporate owners of Peppa Pig have won a copyright battle against the copycat animation Wolfoo after a judge ruled the latter had illegally used audio from the famous cartoon pig.
The US-headquartered entertainment company Hasbro, which owns the rights to Peppa Pig, sued SConnect – the Vietnamese makers of Wolfoo – for copyright infringement regarding videos which used short audio clips of Peppa and her family saying words such as “Hooray!”
A high court judge in London has ordered all videos featuring the animated character Wolfoo to be removed from online platforms including YouTube, stating that the copying had been “prolific”, “longstanding” and that the evidence of “copying of the audio clips is compelling”.
The judge ordered the Wolfoo videos to be removed before 4pm BST on Monday.
Wolfoo is an animated series starring a young wolf who lives with his family. It has hundreds of millions of views online across channels including YouTube, YouTube Kids and the official Wolfoo World website.
Wolfoo’s makers denied the claims of copyright infringement. They said videos made before mid-2020 contained audio from Peppa Pig because an independent third-party contractor had used these sounds without their knowledge, and that all videos made after this period had used original sounds that were created in-house.
SConnect said that all videos that infringed upon copyright laws have been removed.
However, the high court judge said sound clips from Peppa Pig were found in all of the 92 English-language Wolfoo videos that were examined, and in 75% of the foreign-language videos.
The judge said putting the blame on third-party contractors was “irrelevant” and the claim that videos made after mid-2020 used sound recorded in-house “can be disproved”.
The court action began in 2022, when Hasbro and Peppa Pig’s creators, the London-based Astley Baker Davies studio, claimed that SConnect had attempted “to deceive the young Wolfoo viewership, most aged between two and five, into believing that Wolfoo is the same character as Peppa Pig”.
They also claimed that Wolfoo’s appearance and artwork were similar to Peppa Pig’s design. The legal case was focused on the audio because it was believed that this area would be where it was easiest to prove that copyright infringement had taken place.
SConnect argued that the ruling to remove the Wolfoo videos should only apply to those examined in the sample. It also argued that the ruling to remove Wolfoo videos in the UK, EU and all 166 World Trade Organization member states – including the US and Vietnam – was “too broad”.
The judge said the copying was “extensive, seemingly endemic at least so far as the English-language Wolfoo videos are concerned”.
The Wolfoo animation was released in 2018. It is available in English and has been dubbed into languages including Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish. Like Peppa Pig, it is aimed at children aged two to seven.
SConnect and Hasbro have been approached for comment.
