Evoking versus infringing, and a helluva case for originality clearance.
I caught this one in Aaron Moss’s Copyright Lately newsletter, (link to sign up), where he flagged it among four suits (!) Lee Mendelson Film Productions filed in May — against the Interior Department, an auction house, a belt-maker, and a video game publisher — all over Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts music, which, well, who doesn’t know and love?!
The video game one is the interesting one for our purposes, and Lee Mendelson Film Productions, Inc. v. Madcow, LLC d/b/a GameMill Entertainment is probably a teaching moment, so let’s go.
GameMill evidently licensed the Peanuts characters from Peanuts Worldwide for its 2025 title Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club. The beloved Peanuts music by Vince Guaraldi, however, is controlled by Lee Mendelson Film Productions. GameMill did not license the Vince Guaraldi compositions from LMFP and according to the complaint, GameMill then commissioned composers to write a score that would, in the words of its own Head of Publishing, “honor the recognizable atmosphere and instrumentation style associated with the brand.”
I find no fault in that. That’s one perfectly fine description of soundalikes, a term which sounds self-damning but isn’t. The license probably wasn’t peanuts, and one can evoke qualities from the famous Guaraldi pieces without infringing upon them.
If, though, you’ve licensed such beloved intellectual property as Charles Schulz’s Peanuts characters, visually at least, and employ even some spirit of its familiar piano trio soundtrack, you can’t be shocked to find yourself in litigation. You just can’t.
The complaint finds that 89.6% of a representative gameplay walkthrough video was buttressed by music that resembles Guaraldi’s, essentially saying, “your whole game is our music.” The complaint alleges players “would not even realize they were hearing anything other” than Guaraldi. Let’s pause here. It’s a nice phrase, but not my standard. What players “realize” is not the point; in fact, they’ve described one reasonable goal of writing soundalikes. Suppose all you know is “Linus and Lucy,” the most famous Peanuts music. If I write something that doesn’t infringe on that or any other Guaraldi tune, but you the gamer still think it could plausibly be just more Peanuts music, isn’t that a reasonable goal? That’s a musicological standard.
Say you’re neither a musicologist nor a musician; perhaps not even by a long shot. What if you did think it all sounds just like Linus and Lucy, and perhaps this is despite there being nary a note in common. (I’m not saying that’s the case; I’m saying, “suppose.”) That still has its place in the court’s calculus. It’s the intrinsic prong–the ordinary observer’s impressions–here I’d say thoughtfully smuggled in by assertion. As an expert, that’s not my standard, but it may be considered by the court at some point. The question, though, is whether the plaintiffs are reliant on it and had to plead it, because their musicological case is thinner than 89.6% would have us believe.
The complaint says “GameMill wanted the soundtrack to the
GameMill Game to evoke the Guaraldi Compositions, specifically “Linus and Lucy” and
“Skating.” — two of the biggies, for sure. The former is what most of us would regard as the quintessential Peanuts music, and the latter is more than likely your favorite from A Charlie Brown Christmas, even if you don’t know its title. But that a Peanuts game commissioned to evoke Peanuts music ends up resembling Peanuts music is not a finding. What a court has to decide is not whether the cues resemble Guaraldi, but whether the resemblance is copied protectable expression.
The complaint focuses on its transcriptions (fragments of sheet music) of what it calls the GameMill Game’s “success” themes — four-note melodies, either Do-Re-Mi-Mi or Do-Sol-Do-Do. And you might well imagine I’m going to talk about brief stepwise melodic fragments or root-fifth ostinatos, but save that for another day.
What I’m left wondering about is the order of operations.
Originality Clearance
The complaint prays, as most complaints do, that the Defendants’ willful infringement of Plaintiff’s copyrights entitle the Plaintiff to its actual damages or statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work. So, Linus and Lucy plus Skating, that’s two works, so that’s $300k. This is especially cute, if, as I understand it, there are 17 cues in the game (appearing many times, of course), 14 or 15 of which are argued to be substantially similar to Linus and Lucy, and one other too close to Skating? Separating the protectable from the generic is way better done before publishing! It is exactly the review that the originality clearance step takes into account. Clearance is the opposite of willfulness. A documented, good-faith opinion taken before release is the difference between an honest call and the reckless indifference that drives statutory damages from a non-willful ceiling of $30,000 per work, to a willful ceiling of $150,000 a work. So, let’s see here, back of the napkin, Social Network style, $300k-$60k = $240k. Take away willful, and four-fifths of the demand evaporates.
I’ll have to read the complaint more thoroughly to begin to form an opinion on the merits, but this part stands:
Evoke all you like. Just know, before you ship, which qualities you’re free to borrow and which ones someone owns.
