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.
“We just don’t want to tolerate it anymore,” he said.
Lee Mendelson, an Emmy Award-winning producer, started the production company in 1963. He helped put the holiday staple “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on television in 1965, followed by several other classics. He died in 2019, and his company is the publisher of the Vince Guaraldi Library of Charlie Brown music.
Guaraldi composed the original music for the “Peanuts” specials that evokes Schultz’s gang for audiences worldwide. His music “has become indelibly associated with the Peanuts characters and films,” according to one of the lawsuits.
According to the lawsuit, the Interior Department used “O Tannenbaum” from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in a digital holiday card posted in December to social media without permission.
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Mr. Jacobson said the suit against the department was not about politics, but “about the ability to control the use of the copyrighted works.”
The U.S. government “took music that might be available for an individual to use on their Facebook page and turned it into a promotional piece for the Department of the Interior, and they can’t do that,” he said.
The Interior Department said in emailed statement on Thursday that it does not “have comment on litigation.”
The lawsuits against Heritage Auction and Buckle-Down Inc. also accuse the companies of misusing the music on social media. The suit against the video game company says that the music in the 2025 “Peanuts” video game “Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club” was too similar to Guaraldi’s tunes.
Christina Rees, a spokeswoman for Heritage Auctions, said the company “has not been served with or reviewed the complaint.”
“If and when we receive it, we will review the allegations and respond as appropriate,” she said.
Buckle-Down did not respond to a phone call requesting comment on Thursday, and GameMill did not reply to an emailed request for comment on Thursday.
Mr. Jacobson said there were a dozen other companies who had used the “Peanuts” catalog without proper authorization, and warned that he and his client would “continue on this path of enforcement.”
“Those letters will be going out next week,” he said.
Aimee Ortiz covers breaking news and other topics for The Times.
The post It’s a Copyright Lawsuit, Charlie Brown appeared first on New York Times.
