Grumpy Cat Wants $600K From 'Pirating' Coffee Maker (torrentfreak.com)

Eloking quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Grumpy Cat is not pleased, yet. Her owners have asked a California federal court to issue a $600,000 judgment against a coffee maker which allegedly exploited their copyrights (PDF). In addition, they want damages for trademark and contract breach, and a ban on the company in question from selling any associated Grumpy Cat merchandise. There are dozens of celebrity cats on the internet, but Grumpy Cat probably tops them all. The cat's owners have made millions thanks to their pet's unique facial expression, which turned her into an overnight internet star. Part of this revenue comes from successful merchandise lines, including the Grumpy Cat "Grumppuccino" iced coffee beverage, sold by the California company Grenade Beverage. The company licensed the copyright and trademarks to sell the iced coffee, but is otherwise not affiliated with the cat and its owners. Initially this partnership went well, but after the coffee maker started to sell other "Grumpy Cat" products, things turned bad. TorrentFreak adds: "The cat's owners, incorporated as Grumpy Cat LLC, took the matter to court last year with demands for the coffee maker to stop infringing associated copyrights and trademarks. After Grenade Beverage failed to properly respond to the allegations, Grumpy Cat's owners moved for a default, which a court clerk entered in early June. A few days ago they went ahead and submitted a motion for default judgement."

Comments

Seems about right

[Anonymous Coward]

For once copyright is being used as it was intended. I'm not a fan of copyright in any sense, but when it's used like this, at least I'm not sitting here seething. Pretty damn obvious you can't just slap someone else's stuff on your coffee bags and expect they'll be OK with it.

Re: Seems about right

[houghi]

Yes, she does. The fact that she does not act upon it is het choice and now it will be too late, but at the beginning, she (or another person who made the image, but most likely herself) had the copyright.
Each time you create something, you automatically get the copyright, unless you have made alternative arrangements (e.g. working at a company or under contract). If you write something or take a photo, the copyright is yours. You have the right to decide who is allowed to copy it. Even: people should ASK you if they have the right to copy it.

In most cases people on the Internet are extremely lenient about copyright. Especially on the InterWebs. And in the case of Laina, even encourage it, as it raiser their value or self esteem or whatever. That does not mean they do not have the copyright in the first place.

Re:Seems about right

[EvilSS]

You are right, and this is a trademark and breach of contract lawsuit. The internet gets these confused all the time when reporting on this stuff, but even the summary says so. Other people in these comments just assume copyright for some reason.

Re: Seems about right

[hawguy]

It's their fracking cat.

This makes me lose a lot of sympathy for the cat, the cat is clearly aligned with Big Oil interests and shouldn't be using wealth gained by its climate destroying drilling practices to stomp on small time coffee makers.

Re:Honestly never heard of this Grumpy Cat

[93 Escort Wagon]

I've heard of Smelly Cat... does that count?

Re:Paying for pussy

[Salgak1]

Hence, the Kardashians. Who, from all I can conclude, are famous for being famous. . .

Re:They want 600k

[AmiMoJo]

They are asking for the maximum $150,000 per infringement. At least in this case there really is commercial scale abuse, it's not like the RIAA demanding $150,000 from some kid's parents for one song.

Re:copyright holder problems

[DirkDaring]

It's not purrfect is it?

Something is hinkey here

[Anonymous Coward]

The defendant once licensed this IP and now infringes w/o license on new products.
Either
a) they now believe the IP is not licensable (in which case they would have responded in court) , or
b) they are going bankrupt and don't have the $ to fight and don't care as they know they are going tits up

Re:Meme

[mindwhip]

But while the meme is "about the cat" the original meme is actually based on a specific photograph/video(s) of the cat that the owners published on the internet and hold copyrights on - the cat itself doesn't exist inside a computer and isn't published on the internet. While they have allowed use of the image for memes they also have chosen to require any commercial use to be licensed (using both copyright and trademark laws as appropriate).

The drawing is almost certainly a derivative work of those images/videos being used for commercial use... having done some further reading the drawing in use was *not* made directly from the real life cat which pretty much ties up the copyright claim for every instance where the drawing, a derivative work of a copyrighted image, was used without licence.

As far as the trademarks go its a little more fuzzy but in initially licensing the use of trademarks from Grumpy Cat LLC for the one product the coffee company acknowledged and accepted the validity of the trademark and will make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to argue otherwise in court.

Re:Paying for pussy

[AmiMoJo]

I thought it was because of the occupation of Bajour and their alliance with the Dominion.

Re:They want 600k

[Rakarra]

Do you have a problem with the content of the sig?

"SJW" is a completely useless term (it didn't used to be...). It means absolutely nothing now, as it's been so overused that it means anything at all, anything the speaker doesn't like. Now it's really only an indication that the speaker is a bit of a dullard, or has been entirely disconnected from the Internet since the start of GamerGate.