3 Count: Victorious Peppa

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1: Children’s Animation Series Wolfoo Found Guilty of Copying Peppa Pig

First off today, Sinéad Campbell at The Guardian reports that Hasbro, the owners of the Peppa Pig brand, have won a long-running copyright infringement lawsuit against a Vietnam-based company offering a similar cartoon.

The lawsuit targeted SConnect, a Vietnamese company that produces Wolfoo, a children’s cartoon that features a similar style to Peppa Pig and, according to Hasbro, many of the same sound effects. SConnect put the blame on a third-party contractor that used Peppa Pig sound effects without their knowledge and said that they had already removed the infringing content.

However, the court found that all of the Wolfoo videos contained copyright-infringing content and that shifting the blame to a contract was irrelevant. The court has ordered SConnect to remove all Wolfoo videos by Monday, essentially removing the series from its home on YouTube.

2: Kaggle Removes Problematic Stroke Dataset for Copyright Infringement

Next up today, Lori Youmshajekian at Retraction Watch reports that the data repository Kaggle has removed an image dataset from its website, saying that it was due to copyright infringement issues.

The dataset contained images of people who had been diagnosed with a stroke. The goal of the dataset was to help researchers better understand the signs of a stroke and train AI systems to detect the visual cues. However, the dataset also contained images of celebrities and other public figures, likely from third parties without a license.

The issues with the dataset had resulted in several papers being retracted, though new studies using the dataset have since been published. The page for the dataset returns a 404 error with no explanation as to why it was removed. However, copyright is the most likely reason as multiple entities had reported the intellectual property issues to Kaggle prior to the removal of the dataset.

3: SoundPatrol Sued by Lucas Keller and Oak Felder, Who Allege They Helped Develop Its Copyright-Detection Software Without Compensation

Finally today, Murray Stassen at Music Business Worldwide reports that the AI-music infringement detection company SoundPatrol is facing a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Lucas Keller and Oak Felder, who allege that the company has not paid them for their contributions to the development of their software.

According to the complaint, the two sides worked together through a predecessor company, Snowcrash, to develop software to detect copyright infringement issues in AI-generated music. However, the lawsuit alleges that Walter De Brouwer, the founder and CEO of SoundPatrol, founded the new company, took the software and left his former partners with a stake in a worthless company.

SoundPatrol has not responded to the allegations. However, SoundPatrol is the first company to strike a deal with Universal Music Group and Sony Music to detect infringing elements in AI-generated music.

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