[Guest Post] This Little Piggy Went to Court: Peppa Pig vs Wolfoo
Oliver Fairhurst
[Guest Post] This Little Piggy Went to Court: Peppa Pig vs Wolfoo
The IPKat is pleased to host the following guest post from the talented Thomas Hood (Gatehouse Chambers) on last month's Peppa Pig case, Hasbro Consumer Products Licensing Ltd & Anor v SConnect Medica LLC & Ors [2026] EWHC 1546 (Ch). Over to Tom!
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"At the tail end of June, Richard Smith J handed down his judgment in the matter of Hasbro Consumer Products Licensing Ltd & Anor v SConnect Medica LLC & Ors [2026] EWHC 1546 (Ch). This was a summary judgment regarding the sound-recording copyright arising from a broader claim arising from the well-known children’s show Peppa Pig. This article looks at the key components of that judgment, from the jurisdictional question faced by the court to technical questions on subsistence, authorship, ownership, infringement, and communication to the public.
The Brownlie Presumption
However, the court had to consider the question of multi-jurisdictional copyright and the application of the Brownlie Presumption, a concept arising from FS Cairo (Nile Plaza) LLC v Lady Brownlie [2021] UKSC 45. The Defendants’ position was that the questions in this case should be determined under Vietnamese law where the alleged infringement took place, under the lex loci proctectionis principle. However, Smith J at [44] held that the Defendants failed to assert “material differences” between English and Vietnamese law. Thus, he relied on the UK’s adherence to international copyright treaties to decide that English and Welsh principles could apply and were not materially different.
Finding the Clips
At the heart of this application was whether audio clips had been taken from Peppa Pig. The court had to first identify the nature of the “clips” taken and the process of production. The Claimants had placed reliance on Peppa Pig videos rather than the original audio files. The court permitted such reliance as (a) at [47] recognised the “onerous and disproportionate” process it would require searching for the original clips and (b) the Defendants had not engaged with the Claimant’s body of evidence as to how the Peppa Pig audio clips were created. From both these points, the court was satisfied that the Defendants would be unlikely to succeed on this point at trial.
Creating Peppa’s Oinks
Then, the Defendants sought to challenge the authorship of the clips, suggesting that because there was a lack of a written contract, the recording studio itself may be the first owner of the copyright. There was a further assertion as to the application of other jurisdictional views on authorship, but the judge held that again the Defendants made a “mere assertion which lack[ed] a sufficient degree of conviction for these summary judgment purposes” (see [49]). Instead, Smith J found that the production companies took the relevant steps to produce the recordings, of which booking the studios was only one step. Therefore, first ownership and authorship of those clips fell in favour of the claimants.
Owning Peppa’s Snorts
The next attempt by the Defendant to resist summary judgment attacking the Claimant’s position on ownership as vague, pursuing the validity of the contractual documentation evidencing title. However, Smith J was satisfied at [53] that the evidence was “cogent, compelling and corroborated by the record” contained within the contracts. Again, the court held that the lack of material evidence showed that there was no real prospect of successfully challenging the question of title lying with the Claimant.
Matching up with the Spectrograms
Infringement allegedly arose according to the Claimants from the audio captured in videos of Peppa Pig being utilised in the Defendants’ work, amounting to indirect copying. The Claimant relied on spectrogram evidence to compare the sound files used in the works. A significant number of matches were identified, eventually totalling 67 allegedly copied clips. The Defendants admitted use of the clips, but that all material produced post mid-2020 was independently created. However, the Claimants then pointed to newly produced videos containing infringing material. Again, this issue was not meaningfully tackled by the Defendant in the view of Smith J such as to overcome a reasonable inference of copying.
The Defendants tried to run several arguments that their use was permissible, but Smith J relied on C 476/17 Pelham GmbH & Ors v Ralf Hütter & Anor, holding that the clips were still (a) recognisable and (b) would still be copies in part even if edited further. The Defendants also tried to criticise the Claimant for narrowing their case, suggesting it had affected the reliability of their claim, but this was robustly rejected.
The Defendant was therefore found to have no real prospect of successfully defending the claim for infringement by the copying of the clips.
Wolfoo’s Big Bad Target
There was then an assessment of whether the Defendants had targeted the UK such as to infringe the right of communication to the Public. The Claimant relied on the fact that earlier evidence by the Defendants of their viewership detailed that 3% of their viewers originated from the UK. While that may seem a small percentage, it is part of a much larger number of views on YouTube, exceeding one billion worldwide per year from 2020-2022. The Defendants tried to suggest that there was no way to control or restrict country access, but YouTube’s own documentation detailed an ability to block different territories. Smith J therefore held that the Defendants was targeting the UK and again had no reasonable prospect of defending this aspect of the claim.
Moral of the Story
The message this judgment leaves for those tackling a summary judgment application is spelt out quite clearly at [84] of Smith J’s judgment; the points of the Defendants “represent the raising of much smoke but, in the face of a compelling and comprehensive plea of sound recording copyright infringement and a significant body of supporting evidence, they lack substance.” The Defendants did not present cogent meaningful responses to the points raised in this case, standing as a stark warning to defendants, domestic and international, of the need to ensure responses to a summary judgment application provide more than bare assertions to ensure survival. To quote Peppa, 'If you jump in muddy puddles, you must wear your boots!'"