Copyright Case Study

There is a well-known fact that with the development of the intellectual property, there is a strict law regarding its copyrighting. However, this law can be easily slewed. Let’s examine the situation with the famous Ty, Inc. that is selling the Beanie Babies line of small stuffed animals and its competing toy manufacturer, GMA Accessories, Inc. (GMA) that has brought out its own line of the stuffed animals. The latest claims to have their own line; however, it is rather surprisingly that they are identical to the ones of the Ty, Inc. It is no doubt that the GMA have created the stuffed animals according to the Ty’s Daisy and to the Ty’s Squealer because GMA has seen the success of these two heroes and in addition, it is always easy to create something alike rather than something completely different. However, they have added some features and changed the names of the toys, making them not the same.

In addition, it is rather difficult to find out whether it is a copyright or not. If we, for example, take pictures of the Statue of Liberty from the same place and will get two common photos, will it be a copyright? Secondly, if we look at the animals-pigs, all of them are alike, and creating an animal pig also will mean making them alike.

Anyway, Ty sued GMA for copyright infringement. However, GMA’s pig does have some differences, for example, a ribbon around the neck of the Preston, the colors and the names, of course. Yes, they look very identically; however, identity cannot be regarded as infringement. It is a well-known fact that the Copyright Act forbids to copy; hence, when we have an independent creation resulting in the identity of the works, the creator of that work has the right to sell it.