Hasbro alleged that audio recordings from Peppa Pig had been copied in Wolfoo videos, creating an impression of association between the two programmes.

This finding enabled Hasbro in a separate High Court decision to secure a near-global injunction against the producers of Wolfoo.

Jurisdiction

In the initial case, the defendants first argued that the claim should be governed by the laws of the countries where the alleged infringement occurred, including Vietnam.

The court rejected this argument as Hasbro was entitled to rely on the presumption that foreign copyright laws do not materially differ from English law, particularly given the international copyright framework established by treaties such as TRIPS and the WPPT. As the defendants failed to identify any specific differences between the applicable regimes, the claim was therefore determined under the law of England and Wales.

Subsistence and ownership

Next, the defendants challenged both the existence and ownership of any copyright in the sound recordings.

First, they argued that since Hasbro’s evidence was based on audio extracted from Peppa Pig YouTube videos, they were relying on copies of recordings, not originals, as such no copyright could subsist in them under 5A(2) CDPA 1988. Yet the court disagreed as Hasbro had provided detailed evidence explaining how the recordings were stored and created, accepting that to locate every original recording would have been disproportionate. Therefore, use of audio extracted from YouTube was an acceptable substitute.

The defendants also attempted to dispute Hasbro’s ownership of the recordings, claiming their evidence was nothing but vague recollections of the production process. Yet again, the court disagreed as detailed evidence of the creation of the sounds through various production companies established a clear chain of title.

As a result, the court concluded that neither challenge had any realistic prospect of success at trial.

Spectrogram evidence

A significant feature of the case was Hasbro’s reliance on spectrogram evidence, an analysis of the visual representations of sound frequencies capable of identifying identical or substantially similar recordings.

Hasbro’s experts identified at least 1,175 instances of copying across 92 English-language Wolfoo videos, alongside additional matches in later uploads and foreign-language content.

The defendants criticised the methodology as subjective and affected by audio compression but provided no convincing alternative explanation and admitted that a third party had copied Peppa Pig sounds into 66 Wolfoo videos during production.

The judge described Hasbro’s evidence as compelling and largely unanswered, concluding that the defendants had no real prospect of successfully defending the infringement claim.

Communication to the public

Finally, the defendants argued that their content targeted audiences in Vietnam, USA and Canada, not the UK.

The court again rejected this submission, as although UK viewers represented only around 3% of total viewership, that equated to a substantial audience given the scale of the operation with 48 billion total views. Hasbro also produced evidence showing that YouTube offered specific geographical blocking tools.

Accordingly, the court found that the defendants had no real prospect of disputing that the works had been communicated to the UK public.

The consequential injunction

The second case focused on the scope of the relief available to Hasbro. Although Hasbro’s infringement evidence was based on fewer than 200 sample videos, those videos exhibited an infringement rate near 100%, leading Hasbro to argue that the copying was systemic across the wider Wolfoo catalogue.

The court agreed. Rather than requiring analysis of more than 30,000 videos, the judge held that safe inferences could be drawn from the representative sample. Given the scale of the infringement, and its continuation after Hasbro first raised concerns in 2020, the court granted an injunction covering the entire Wolfoo catalogue across the UK, the EU and 166 countries party to international copyright conventions, giving the order an effectively worldwide reach.

Conclusions

These decisions highlight that summary judgment applications cannot be resisted through speculation or undeveloped arguments, to address detailed evidence equally detailed criticism and argumentation is needed with a view of establishing a real prospect of success at trial.

The judgments also demonstrate that large-scale online infringers cannot rely on the volume of their activity as a shield against effective enforcement, given the findings of systematic infringement from a representative sample along with the deployment of a practically worldwide injunction. 

Case details at a glance

Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Decision level: High Court
Parties: Hasbro Consumer Products v Cong Ty Tnhh Dau Tu Cong Nghe Va Dich Vu Sconnect Viet Nam
Dates: 25 June 2026 & 27 July 2026
Citations: [2026] EWHC 1546 (Ch) & [2026] EWHC 1957 (Ch)
Decisions: https://dycip.com/2026-ewhc-1546-ch & https://dycip.com/2026-ewhc-1957-ch