Denise Daniels v. the Walt Disney Company
Not provided in excerpt (2020)
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Rule of Law:
A graphically-depicted character is not entitled to copyright protection unless it is sufficiently delineated with consistent, identifiable character traits and attributes across iterations and is also especially distinctive. Merely anthropomorphizing an idea, such as an emotion or color, is insufficient to qualify for copyright protection.
Facts:
- Denise Daniels, an expert in children's emotional intelligence, developed a line of characters called The Moodsters.
- The Moodsters consisted of five color-coded anthropomorphic characters, each representing a single emotion: pink (love), yellow (happiness), blue (sadness), red (anger), and green (fear).
- In a 2005 'Bible' pitchbook and a 2007 television pilot, the characters were depicted as thin, insect-like beings with antennas.
- Between 2005 and 2009, Daniels and her team pitched The Moodsters to various employees and executives at The Walt Disney Company and its affiliates.
- The names for each character changed across different iterations; for example, the red/anger character was named Roary, then Rizzi, and later Razzy.
- Between 2012 and 2013, Daniels's team developed a 'second generation' of Moodsters as toys, which had a substantially different appearance as small, cuddly bears with hats and capes.
- In 2010, Disney began development of the movie 'Inside Out,' which was released in 2015 and centers on five anthropomorphized emotions inside a young girl's mind.
Procedural Posture:
- In 2017, Denise Daniels sued The Walt Disney Company in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleging breach of an implied-in-fact contract.
- Daniels later filed an amended complaint, adding The Moodsters Company as a plaintiff and asserting a claim for copyright infringement.
- Disney filed a motion to dismiss the amended complaint.
- The district court granted Disney's motion to dismiss, ruling that The Moodsters characters were not protectable under copyright law.
- Daniels and The Moodsters Company (Appellants) appealed the district court's dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
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Issue:
Are anthropomorphized characters that represent emotions, but lack consistent physical appearances, names, and identifiable traits across different versions, protectable by copyright?
Opinions:
Majority - McKeown
No. Anthropomorphized characters that lack consistent, identifiable traits across different versions are not protectable by copyright. To qualify for copyright protection, a character must be sufficiently delineated and especially distinctive. The court applied the three-part test from DC Comics v. Towle, which requires that a character (1) has physical and conceptual qualities, (2) is sufficiently delineated with consistent traits to be recognizable whenever it appears, and (3) is especially distinctive. While The Moodsters met the first prong, they failed the second because their physical appearance changed dramatically from insect-like to bear-like, their names were inconsistent, and their personalities were 'lightly sketched' without consistent attributes. The court also held they failed the third prong because the idea of color-coding emotions is not unique, and the characters themselves lacked unique elements of expression. The court further found the characters did not qualify for protection under the alternative 'story being told' test because they were merely 'chessmen in the game of telling the story' about emotions, not the central focus of the narrative itself.
Analysis:
This decision reinforces the high standard for character copyrightability in the Ninth Circuit, emphasizing that a character must possess a consistent and well-delineated identity to be protectable. It clarifies that merely embodying an unprotectable idea, such as associating colors with emotions, is insufficient to create a copyrightable character. The ruling serves as a caution to creators that significant changes to a character's appearance, name, and core traits across different versions can strip it of copyright protection. This case solidifies the distinction between an unprotectable 'idea' of a character and its protectable 'expression,' making it more difficult to bring infringement claims for characters that are not consistently and distinctively developed.
