The owners of the rights to Barney the Dinosaur, Lyons Partnership, have lost an action brought against them in the US courts by the Electronic Freedom Foundation. Lyons repeatedly requested that Stuart Frankel take down images of Barney from his website, which describes the purple dino as “the Enemy” and as “seriously not good for kids”. Lyons claimed infringement of copyright in the images of Barney. However, EFF successfully claimed that Mr Frankel’s use was parody and therefore protected by the First Amendment rights to free speech and the right to fair use for parody under US copyright law. On Monday the court approved a settlement agreed between the parties under which Lyons agreed not to pursue Mr Frankel further.
In the UK there is no right to parody as such, but “fair dealing with a work for the purpose of criticism or review” will not infringe copyright in that work provided that sufficient acknowledgement of the copyright owner is made.
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