UK court orders Vietnam's SConnect to remove Wolfoo videos worldwide over copyright infringement: media

The court found that SConnect had used short audio clips featuring Peppa Pig, the main character in the animated series of the same name, and her family members without permission, including familiar exclamations such as 'Hooray!' The Guardian reported.

Under the ruling, all Wolfoo videos must be removed from online platforms, including YouTube, YouTube Kids, and the official Wolfoo World website, by 4:00 pm on August 3, UK time, or 10:00 pm the same day in Vietnam.

The order applies to all 166 member countries of the World Trade Organization, including the U.S. and Vietnam, rather than being limited to the UK or the European Union.

The ruling followed a 2022 copyright lawsuit against SConnect filed by Hasbro and London-based studio Astley Baker Davies, the studio behind the Peppa Pig animated series.

The plaintiffs initially alleged that SConnect had deliberately sought to mislead Wolfoo's main audience, primarily children aged two to five, into believing that Wolfoo and Peppa Pig were the same character.

They also alleged that Wolfoo's character design and visual style bore significant similarities to those of Peppa Pig.

The plaintiffs later shifted their focus to audio, arguing that the use of audio clips provided clearer evidence of direct copying.

The judge described the evidence of audio copying as entirely convincing and found that the copying had occurred on a large scale and over an extended period.

The judge said Peppa Pig audio clips were found in all 92 English-language Wolfoo videos examined by the court and in 75 percent of the videos in other languages.

SConnect denied systematic copyright infringement, arguing that the audio from Peppa Pig found in videos produced before mid-2020 had been added without the company's knowledge by an independent third-party contractor.

The company said videos produced after mid-2020 used original audio recorded by SConnect and that all previously identified infringing videos had already been removed.

The judge rejected SConnect's defense, saying that blaming a third-party contractor was 'irrelevant' and that SConnect's claim that videos produced after mid-2020 used self-recorded audio had been disproved by the evidence.

SConnect argued that the removal order should apply only to the videos included in the court's sample review and that extending it beyond the UK and the European Union to all 166 WTO member countries was overly broad.

Launched in 2018, the Wolfoo series, which features a five-year-old wolf who lives with his family in a small village in the U.S., has attracted hundreds of millions of online views on platforms including YouTube, YouTube Kids, and the official Wolfoo World website.

The series has attracted hundreds of millions of online views and has been released in multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese, on platforms such as YouTube, YouTube Kids and the official Wolfoo World website.

Tuoi Tre (Youth) online newspaper's reporters contacted SConnect for comment on the ruling but had not received a response.