Last week the Amsterdam Court of Appeal decided that the Miffy parodies of webforum Punt.nl do not infringe on the copyrights owned by Mercis, the rightholding entity of Dick Bruna. Last year the Amsterdam Interlocutory Court awarded an injunction relating to 'nijn-eleven' [Miffy is called NIJN in Dutch]: Miffy was depicted in an airplane flying towards a skyscraper (click here for my review last year). But Miffy could be depicted with big red eyes or a line of cocaine, as these did take sufficient distance from the original Miffy. Now the Court of Appeal even drew a more principal line: all of these messages clearly have a humoristic and ironising nature, even though not everyone will not think it is funny. Hence these parodies cannot be forbidden based on copyright.
So no copyright infringement, but neither a trademark infringement: “In view of the humoristic intention, the lack of any competing motive, the distance to the trademarks owned by Mercis and the lack of any confusion, there is a valid reason for this use.”
Maarten Haak, copyright lawyer in the Netherlands
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Last week the Amsterdam Court of Appeal decided that the Miffy parodies of webforum Punt.nl do not infringe on the copyrights owned by Mercis, the rightholding entity of Dick Bruna. Last year the Amsterdam Interlocutory Court awarded an injunction relating to 'nijn-eleven' [Miffy is called NIJN in Dutch]: Miffy was depicted in an airplane flying towards a skyscraper (click here for my review last year). But Miffy could be depicted with big red eyes or a line of cocaine, as these did take sufficient distance from the original Miffy. Now the Court of Appeal even drew a more principal line: all of these messages clearly have a humoristic and ironising nature, even though not everyone will not think it is funny. Hence these parodies cannot be forbidden based on copyright.
So no copyright infringement, but neither a trademark infringement: “In view of the humoristic intention, the lack of any competing motive, the distance to the trademarks owned by Mercis and the lack of any confusion, there is a valid reason for this use.”
Maarten Haak, copyright lawyer in the Netherlands