Children’s TV series Wolfoo found guilty of copying Peppa Pig | Sorry Pig

Company owners a Sorry Pig has won a battle against independent animation company Wolfoo after a judge ruled that the latter had illegally used words from the popular cartoon pig.

The US entertainment company Hasbro, which owns the rights to Peppa Pig, sued SConnect – the makers of Wolfoo in Vietnam – for infringing their rights to cartoons that used the acronym Peppa and her family to say things like “Hooray!”

A judge at the High Court in London has ordered all videos containing Wolfoo’s animation to be removed from the internet including YouTubestating that the copying was “extensive”, “long-term” and that the evidence of “audio copying is compelling”.

A judge ordered Wolfoo’s videos to be taken down before 4pm BST on Monday.

Wolfoo is an animated cartoon about a young wolf who lives with his family. It has hundreds of millions of views online on channels including YouTube, YouTube Kids and the official Wolfoo World website.

The developers of Wolfoo have denied claims of copyright infringement. He also said that movies made before 2020 contained the voice from Peppa Pig because an independent third-party contractor used the voice without his knowledge, and that all movies made after that time used the original voice produced in-house.

SConnect said that all videos that violate copyright laws have been removed.

However, a High Court judge said that audio material from Peppa Pig was found in all 92 English-language Wolfoo videos analyzed, and in 75% of foreign-language videos.

The judge said that placing the blame on third-party contractors was “irrelevant” and claims that videos produced during 2020 used in-house recorded sound “can be challenged”.

The lawsuit began in 2022, when the creators of Hasbro and Peppa Pig, the London studio of Astley Baker Davies, said that SConnect tried to “deceive young viewers of Wolfoo, between the ages of two and five, into believing that Wolfoo is the same person as Peppa Pig”.

He also said that Wolfoo’s design and artwork were similar to Peppa Pig’s designs. The criminal case focused on audio recordings because it was believed that this area would be the easiest to prove that a violation of the law had taken place.

SConnect said the decision to remove Wolfoo videos should apply to those tested in the sample. He also argued that the decision to remove Wolfoo videos from the UK, EU and all 166 countries of the World Trade Organization – including the US and Vietnam – was “too broad”.

The judge said the copying was “excessive, it appears to be unusual as far as Wolfoo’s English videos are concerned”.

Wolfoo Movies was released in 2018. It is available in English and dubbed in Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish. Like Peppa Pig, it is aimed at children aged two to seven.

SConnect and Hasbro have been contacted for comment.