Author: Andy Lee

The High Court has handed down judgment in Hasbro Consumer Products Licensing Ltd & Anor v SConnect Co. Ltd & Ors, granting Brandsmiths’ client, Hasbro, summary judgment in relation to a key aspect of its copyright infringement claim concerning sound recordings.

The proceedings concern the intellectual property rights in Peppa Pig, one of the world’s most successful children’s entertainment brands. Since its UK launch in 2004, the series has become a global phenomenon, with the claims in these proceedings spanning alleged infringements across the UK, the European Union and numerous other territories worldwide.

Although a summary judgment application, the issues before the Court were highly technical. The Court was required to consider copyright subsistence in individual sound recordings, as well as questions of authorship, ownership and chain of title over many years of production. The application also involved detailed expert spectrogram evidence said to establish indirect copying.

In addition, the case raised significant multi-jurisdictional copyright and private international law issues, including the application of the Brownlie presumption of similarity where relief was sought across numerous jurisdictions.

In granting summary judgment, the Court concluded that the defendants had no real prospect of successfully defending the sound recording copyright claim. The judgment demonstrates the Court’s willingness to determine technically complex copyright issues on a summary basis where the evidential record is sufficiently developed. It also contains what is likely to become an important discussion of the application of the Brownlie presumption in an intellectual property context.

More broadly, the decision provides detailed consideration of copyright subsistence, ownership and infringement in relation to sound recordings, illustrating how carefully prepared factual and expert evidence can enable technically sophisticated copyright disputes to be resolved without the need for a full trial.

You can read the full judgment here.