Oh, dear! – Peppa Pig sound recordings infringed by Wolfoo producers

Background

In January 2022, Hasbro Consumer Products Licensing Limited and Astley Baker Davies Limited, companies that own various intellectual property rights and goodwill associated with the animated children’s series Peppa Pig, issued proceedings against SConnect Co. Ltd, SConnect Media LLC and the SConnect founder and CEO, Manh Hoang Ta, alleging that they had infringed the claimants’ copyright and damaged the claimants’ goodwill.

SConnect and Mr Ta produced the animated children’s series Wolfoo, a Vietnamese programme designed for children aged between two and five years, which follows the adventures of a wolf called Wolfoo and his parents and siblings. Hasbro and Astley Baker Davies claimed that the defendants had infringed their copyright and damaged their goodwill in Peppa Pig by deceiving the young Wolfoo audience into believing that the titular character was the same as, or economically connected with, Peppa Pig, while being of inferior quality and suitability to their audience.

The Peppa Pig companies issued an application for summary judgment in August 2025 in relation to one aspect of the claim: whether SConnect Co Ltd and Mr Ta had infringed copyright in certain Peppa Pig sound recordings through their indirect copying of, and communication to the public through, the Wolfoo videos. The application was supported by expert evidence from a sound analyst and an audio expert.

The defendants denied the claim in its entirety, but they accepted that certain Wolfoo videos had incorporated sounds from Peppa Pig episodes (e.g. words spoken by its characters and sound effects), attributing that solely to an independent third-party contractor, Mr Khoa, who had supplied audio clips from Peppa Pig for use in Wolfoo videos, without SConnect’s or Mr Ta’s knowledge.

Following unsuccessful attempts to have the application determined on the papers and later adjourned, neither SConnect nor Mr Ta attended the hearing, citing geographical constraints and their unrepresented status. Nevertheless, Mr Justice Smith considered their skeleton argument, Mr Ta’s witness statement and the amended defence in full.

Decision

Applying the well-established principles of summary judgment, as summarised by Mr Justice Lewison in Easyair v Opal Telecom, ^[2] Smith J considered whether SConnect and Mr Ta had any real prospect of successfully defending the claim, and whether there was any compelling reason why the case should be disposed of at a trial.

Presumption of similarity

The Peppa Pig companies pleaded two forms of infringement:

1. indirect copying of the relevant sound recordings, and
2. the communication of those copied recordings to the public.

The alleged acts of copying were said to have taken place in Vietnam by the independent contractor, Mr Khoa, and then by SConnect. The Peppa Pig companies said that the Wolfoo videos were made available globally through YouTube and other digital platforms, attracting more than 48 billion views worldwide by 2024. The second alleged act of infringement therefore concerned multiple jurisdictions, including the UK, the 27 EU Member States and a further 13 territories.

The Peppa Pig companies did not plead the relevant local laws applicable in those jurisdictions, but rather relied on the principles noted by Lord Leggatt in Brownlie: ^[3]

1. the "default rule" that the court will apply English law in default of those jurisdictions where neither party pleads the applicability of foreign law; and/or, in the alternative
2. the "presumption of similarity" between English and foreign laws, in the circumstances where a party pleads that foreign law applies to their case, but fails to provide evidence proving the substance of that law.

Distinguishing between those two rules, Smith J was willing to assume for the purposes of the summary-judgment application that the default rule was not engaged, and that the Peppa Pig companies could not proceed on the basis that English copyright law could be applied across multiple jurisdictions. Yet Smith J accepted that it was fair and reasonable for the Peppa Pig companies to rely on the "presumption of similarity", as there was no material difference between English copyright law, i.e. the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), and the foreign copyright regimes in question, which included the EU Copyright Directive ^[4] and other various international treaties that were relevant to the claim. ^[5]

Ownership of the sound recordings

Smith J then considered whether copyright subsisted in the relevant recordings and, if so, whether the Peppa Pig companies were entitled to enforce the copyright in those by virtue of their authorship and ownership.

As a preliminary point, the judge considered the issue of originality in relation to the subsistence of copyright in sound recordings. He held that the copyright at issue protected the sound recording itself and not the underlying recorded sound. Accordingly, there was no need for the recording to be "original" as a product of creative choice. The international treaties at issue had similar provisions regarding originality.

SConnect and Mr Ta contended that the Peppa Pig companies, in formulating their claim, had relied on extracts taken from Peppa Pig videos, rather than disclosing the original recordings, and that the court could not therefore make a finding on copyright subsistence in the recordings. Smith J decided, however, that it would have been disproportionate for the Peppa Pig companies to locate the original recordings, given the volume of material concerned.

The defendants also pleaded that neither of the Peppa Pig companies would qualify as the "producer" of the sound recordings under section 9 of the CDPA. They alleged that the Peppa Pig companies had failed to adduce evidence of how and when the recordings were created, and of who was responsible for producing them. They argued that the recording studio would be the producer of the recordings and so the first owner of the copyright.

Smith J found that argument unconvincing, conducting a multifactorial analysis of which parties had, for example, booked the recording studio and the performer(s) and so acted as producer. It was clear from witness evidence who was responsible for making the recordings, and the evidence demonstrated a clear chain of title. Further, a sound recording will enjoy UK copyright protection if its author is, for example, a company incorporated under UK law when the recording was made. The evidence indicated that the production companies involved were all UK-registered companies and so qualified for UK copyright protection.

Spectrographic evidence

The most significant evidential issue concerned whether the sounds appearing in the Wolfoo videos had, in fact, been indirectly copied from Peppa Pig. The Peppa Pig companies relied on expert evidence from Mr Weir, an audio analyst, to prove that the sounds had been copied. Mr Weir conducted a forensic comparison of the relevant recordings using spectrogram analysis, and his findings were supported by Mr Foster, an audio expert.

After de-duplication, Mr Weir found that a total of 67 Peppa Pig sounds were found across all of the 100 English-language videos and 75 foreign language videos that were tested. Mr Weir concluded that the sounds used in the Wolfoo videos were either exact copies of the corresponding Peppa Pig clips or had been altered slightly.  

The defendants accepted that 66 Wolfoo videos identified by the Peppa Pig companies contained sounds taken from Peppa Pig, but attributed their inclusion to the third-party contractor, Mr Khoa, who had allegedly supplied the clips without their knowledge. Yet the defendants had made no attempt to stop exploiting those videos since the claim was issued.

Mr Ta further claimed that the videos that were tested were altered during the upload process to YouTube, by compression, mixing, channel blending and other post-production processes. But Mr Ta offered no technical analysis to undermine the findings of the Peppa Pig companies and did not adduce expert evidence, despite having sufficient time to do so. Smith J also noted that, according to the claimants, the YouTube copies copied by the defendants were recognisable copies of the original audio clips in the sense indicated in Pelham, in which the CJEU held that a producer of a sound recording could prevent another person from using an audio sample, even if very short, unless the sample is included in the new sound recording in a "modified form unrecognisable to the ear". ^[6]

Reproduction

Smith J concluded that the sound recordings in the Wolfoo videos were recognisable copies, involving extensive copying, and that the defendants had not engaged meaningfully with the related infringement claim or the expert evidence, and so had no real prospect of successfully defending the reproduction claim.

Communication to the public

The defendants had claimed in their earlier evidence that the USA, Canada and Vietnam were targeted, rather than the UK. The claimants asserted that Wolfoo had very large numbers of users in the UK and most countries in the world, and that even if UK viewers only accounted for around 3% of Wolfoo viewers, Wolfoo was targeted to the UK and worldwide.

Smith J agreed with the claimants, and noted that the defendants had not produced any meaningful evidence to counter or qualify the claimants’ assertion. So, Smith J found that the defendants had no real prospect of successfully defending the claim in relation to communication of the Peppa Pig sounds that matched those on the Wolfoo videos uploaded by the defendants to YouTube.

Summary judgment

Accordingly, Smith J granted the Peppa Pig companies’ application for summary judgment. As the judge noted, even though an intermediary, Mr Khoa, had taken the sound clips from Peppa Pig, liability is strict, both for copying and communication, and so the defendants were found prima facie liable for their "prolific" copying and communication of the relevant recordings.

Smith J declined to enter summary judgment against Mr Ta in relation to his pre-claim conduct, as it was not clear whether he had the relevant knowledge of the infringing acts at the time. Yet Smith J was prepared to do so in relation to post-issue infringements.

Comment

The decision demonstrates that the court will not hesitate to make a decision at a preliminary stage in egregious cases of copyright infringement, even where the fact patterns are complex. Smith J’s judgment showed that he had little patience for the often improvisatory defences made by SConnect and Mr Ta, and the next step in proceedings will be a consequential hearing to settle the final terms of relief, including the terms of the injunctive relief to protect the Peppa Pig companies’ copyright in the sound recordings.

Further, practitioners should note the court’s application of the "presumption of similarity" rule, which holds that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the laws of a foreign country are presumed to be materially the same as domestic law. The rule is notable in the context of rights-holders involved in international copyright disputes, particularly as copyright infringement often involves an international element in the case of streaming via the internet.

The expert spectrographic evidence played a leading role in this Peppa Pig drama, which demonstrated the claims of unauthorised copying. Although the court found it unrealistic for the Peppa Pig companies to recover the exact sounds in their extensive libraries, the court was persuaded by evidence of recording-studio arrangements. As such, the ruling reinforces the importance of establishing a proper paper trail for the origination of key creative elements.

‍Article written for Entertainment Law Review.