The owner of the “Peanuts” catalog would really like it if companies and the U.S. government stopped using its music without permission.
The owner of music used in “Peanuts” animated specials, including the memorable holiday classic “O Tannenbaum” and the unmistakable “Linus and Lucy” tunes, sued three companies and the U.S. Department of the Interior on Wednesday. It accused them of using its captivating bops in social media posts and a video game without permission.
Lee Mendelson Film Productions filed the copyright infringement suits in federal courts in New York and Washington, D.C. The songs are part of the programs that brought Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang from Charles Schulz’s comic strips off the page and into families’ living rooms.
Marc Jacobson, a lawyer for Lee Mendelson Film Productions, said during an interview on Thursday that the company had been plagued by unauthorized use of its music and decided to “make a statement and file all four lawsuits on the same day.”
“We’ve written demand letters to people over and over again, and these four companies either didn’t respond to us or they responded in a way that indicated they really didn’t care that they were using the music without permission,” he said.
In addition to the U.S. government, the three accused companies are Heritage Auctions, an auction house; Buckle-Down Inc., a belt company; and GameMill Entertainment, a video game publisher.
Mr. Jacobson noted that Lee Mendelson Film was especially concerned with usage of the tunes on some social media platforms. The company does not have any licensing deals with the short video app TikTok, he said. The music that is allowed on the apps owned by Meta, including Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, is only authorized for personal use, not commercial purposes.
