Warner Brothers sued for unauthorized use of Nyan Cat and Keyboard Cat

[DainBramaged]

Warner Brothers is facing a federal lawsuit for using two feline-themed Internet memes in a video game without their creators' permission. The authors of "Keyboard Cat" and "Nyan Cat" have sued the media giant arguing that the game Scribblenauts, published by WB Games, infringes their copyrights and trademarks. The game's developer, 5th Cell, is also named in the lawsuit.

Keyboard Cat is a YouTube video uploaded in 2007. It shows a man's cat supposedly playing music on a keyboard. Nyan Cat is featured in an extremely irritating video that was uploaded to YouTube in 2011. As the complaint describes it, Nyan Cat is "a character with a cat's face and a body resembling a horizontal breakfast bar with pink frosting sprinkled with light red dots" that "flies across the screen, leaving a stream of exhaust in the form of a bright rainbow in its wake."

Both videos went viral and racked up tens of millions of downloads. The creators of the memes have both registered for trademark protection. At some point, 5th Cell allegedly added the characters to Scribblenauts, a series of games for the Nintendo DS and other platforms.

The two cat meme creators teamed up to sue Warner Brothers and 5th Cell. "Defendants have used 'Nyan Cat' and 'Keyboard Cat,' even identifying them by name, to promote and market their games, all without plaintiffs' permission and without any compensation to plaintiffs," they charge


http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/warner-brothers-sued-for-unauthorized-use-of-two-feline-internet-memes/

[Blue_Tires]

1. wow...people are copyrighting memes now?

[DainBramaged]

2. Grumpy Cat is copyrighted

I can use it as long as I don't profit from it........that would make Grump very angry

[Pab Sungenis]

3. Anything you create is copyrighted

And any creator can prevent commercial use of their creations.

[Dash87]

4. It's their work that went into it. Their characters.

A corporation shouldn't just be able to mooch off of your work and not pay you. If that were the case, people would just rip each other off left and right, hence the need for copyright laws.

[Blue_Tires]

5. I'd *seriously* hope that for the sake of consistency

These meme creators aren't the type to have thousands of hours of ripped MP3s and every pre-release Hollywood blockbuster torrent on their hard drives...

[Dash87]

6. Of course they do, but they have the right to claim copyright

on their work, hypocrisy aside.

[Beaverhausen]

7. My thoughts exactly

That, and how many posting in this tread have the same. As well as music they didn't pay for.

[HiPointDem]

9. for the sake of consistency, corporations shouldn't rip off other people's work.

[DainBramaged]

8. It amazes me 'Progressives' would question the ownership of someones work, no matter

if it seems trivial.


Nohting is sacred here, fucking nothing.

[chalky]

10. I'm sorry - I know I should take this seriously, but I was

too busy being tickled at that poetic description of Nyan cat.

Nyan Cat is "a character with a cat's face and a body resembling a horizontal breakfast bar with pink frosting sprinkled with light red dots" that "flies across the screen, leaving a stream of exhaust in the form of a bright rainbow in its wake."

Okay, I'll straighten up and go back to read the rest of the article now.