Jul 31, 2023

Jury Awards $23.5 Million in Moonbug's "Coco Melon" Copyright Lawsuit

A jury ruled that Baby Bus (Fujian) Networking Technology Co. committed copyright infringement with the animated series "Super JoJo," finding that the company willfully infringed dozens of copyrights held by Moonbug, the rights holder of Cochomeron, and Treasure Studios, the show's producer ...

Moonbug prevailed - After two and a half days of deliberations, the jury awarded Moonbug approximately $23.5 million in damages, with $17.6 million in actual damages and profit waiver, and $5.8 million in statutory damages selected.

Case Background Although the trial began on July 5 and lasted three and a half weeks, the legal battle goes back more than two years: in 2021, Moonbug filed its first legal complaint against Baby Bus, alleging that its show "Super Jojo" infringed on the copyrights of numerous Coco Melons. In September of the same year, Youtube removed Super Jojo's channel, citing multiple third-party allegations of copyright infringement. At the time of the deletion, the channel had approximately 22 million subscribers and was in the top 25 animated channels on the platform; in 2022, an amended complaint from Moonbug alleged that Super Jojo was created by "blatant copying" of Cochomeron, and that the show was a "characters, settings, song titles, lyrics, and/or images" and stated that it was "free-riding" on the popularity of the "characters, settings, song titles, lyrics, and/or images.

Moonbug's claim Moonbug claims that Baby Bus sees Cocmellon as the formula for success in early childhood programming, and rather than attempting to create something original, Baby Bus not only copies Cocmellon's formula, but also the characters, songs, framing, cinematography, composition, and overall look and feel of the entire episode The idea is that they chose to directly copy the look and feel of the show. Hundreds of videos were submitted to support this claim, including reproduced video characters, settings, song titles, lyrics, and images. Moonbug claimed that Baby Bus copied 42 characters, plots, and characters from Coco Melon's videos. The jury agreed with 39 of those claims.

Baby Bus defense: The company did not deny the obvious similarities presented by Moonbug, but instead argued that the similar elements between the programs were not original to Cocomelon and were inherent to that type of animated children's programming and therefore not protectable.

Why this case is important - Copyright lawsuits against properties are not uncommon, but in this case, not only did the jury agree that copyright protection for the "Cocomelon" franchise had been infringed, but the individual characters in the show were not "thinly" copyrighted, as had often been the case in the past, unique in that they were subject to full copyright protection.

What is a "thin" copyright-the term refers to a copyright in a work in which only a small amount of creativity is exhibited. A work protected by a thin copyright is not as fervently protected as a work that is deemed to exhibit a high degree of creativity. In a normal copyright, the right holder can prevent others from making substantially similar or derivative copies. In a thin copyright, the right holder is only protected from nearly identical copies. In the case of Cocomelon, characters such as the main character JJ and his family are considered fully protected by the Moonbug copyright, meaning that similar or derivative characters could violate that protection.

They say Ryan Tides of the San Francisco law firm Tyz Law Group PC represented Moonbug at trial: [In particular, Ciara McHale and Deborah Hedley, and Victoria Baxter of Moonbug, who led the trial with me, and whose creation of helped tell the CoComelon story, which is as inspiring as the show they create.

Moonbug's in-house counsel Rob Miller said in a statement:

This verdict is a This should serve as a warning.

The full statement regarding the jury's verdict is available on the Tyz Law Group website.