U.S. Court of Appeals Rejected “The Moodsters” Creator’s Plea for Copyright Infringement

Guaranteeing protection to all types of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works in addition to sound recordings and cinematograph films; includes but not limited to poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software and architecture, the copyright law governs them all. In point of fact, copyright laws also extend its protection to cartoon and animated characters, a.k.a., fictional characters. Usually, in case a person makes use of a cartoon character, in course of his trade, without consent or authorization of the copyright owner, such person is liable to whooping fines which may extend up to imprisonment in some cases. In a recent copyright infringement appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the plea of the creator of the TV Show “The Moodsters” filed against Disney Pixar in respect of its renowned and best-loved creation “Inside Out”.

The present suit was filed by the producer of “The Moodsters”, Denise Daniels in the year 2017 and since then, the dispute underwent a lot of hues and cries. Daniels contended that in order to opt for the most suitable platform for the show; she pitched the idea revolving around the show to various media and entertainment productions including Disney and its subsidiary Pixar, between the years 2005 to 2009. The idea was to create colour-coded animated characters representing a particular mood or emotion, totalling to five emotions, namely; happiness, sadness, anger, fear and love. Factually, a pilot episode was released by Denise in the year 2007 titled as “The Amoodsment Mixup” representing five emotions as five characters.   

She alleged that the Disney Pixar Production, “Inside Out” was made on a similar storyline as well as an identical idea of characters centring around five emotions, namely; joy, anger, fear, sadness and disgust, inside the mind of an 11-year old girl. 

On March 16, 2020, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 9th Circuit dismissed Daniels’ appeal and upheld the ruling passed by the lower court. Justice Margaret McKeown, while writing for the panel, ruled that the characters forming the subject matter of the suit were not sufficiently distinct in order to attract copyright protection.

She commented, “Daniels cannot copyright the idea of colours or emotions, nor can she copyright the idea of using colours to represent emotions where these ideas are embodied in a character without sufficient delineation and distinctiveness”. It was added, “Developing a character as an anthropomorphized version of a specific emotion is not sufficient, in itself, to establish a copyrightable character”.

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