The owner of the Peanuts theme song and other music from the Charlie Brown franchise is going on the legal offensive, filing four copyright lawsuits Wednesday (May 20) over alleged unauthorized uses of Vince Guaraldi‘s iconic jazz tracks.
In one case, Lee Mendelson Film Productions (LMFP) accused a video game company called GameMill Entertainment of creating unlicensed songs that “mimicked and evoked” Guaraldi’s songs for an otherwise-licensed Peanuts game.
In another case, the company accused the U.S. Department of the Interior of directly using Guaraldi’s “O Tannenbaum” from the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas in a digital holiday card without paying for it.
“Unauthorized use doesn’t just violate the law, it erodes the exclusivity and artistic integrity that make these compositions meaningful to generations of fans,” said Mendelson attorney Marc Jacobson, who added that the company will “no longer tolerate companies using their property without a license, especially in this era of instant digital sharing.”
Two more lawsuits, filed against collectibles manufacturers Buckle‑Down Inc. and Heritage Auctions, claim those companies used Peanuts songs, including the unofficial franchise theme “Linus and Lucy,” in promotional social media advertisements.
“The composition is an iconic theme, associated with a beloved children’s series and television Christmas classic special,” Mendelson’s lawyers write. “It is widely familiar to the American public as one of the most popular works of television music of all time.”
The original Peanuts comic strip was created by Charles M. Schulz in 1950, but the famous television specials were a joint project of Schultz, TV producer Lee Mendelson and animator Bill Melendez. Starting with Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, the trio produced dozens of Peanuts specials, many of them scored by Guaraldi.
The rights to Guaraldi’s music are still held by the late Mendelson’s company, and they aren’t afraid to enforce them. In 2019, LMFP filed a similar copyright case against Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park over accusations that it had used Peanuts songs in Christmas-themed theatrical productions for years.
Wednesday’s lawsuit against GameMill is centered on Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club, a video game starring Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy. GameMill properly licensed the Peanuts characters themselves — those rights are owned by a different company — but the lawsuit says it took a shortcut when it came to the music: Creating knockoff tracks that sounded highly similar to the originals.
“GameMill self-evidently wanted the Peanuts imagery in the [Snoopy] game to be paired with the Peanuts music, but, equally self-evidently, did not want to pay plaintiff for rights to use it,” LMFP’s attorneys write in that complaint.
The case against the Department of the Interior, meanwhile, claims that the federal agency used “Tannenbaum” in an animated Christmas card posted to Instagram, X and other social media sites. “The card was viewed millions of times on many platforms,” reads that complaint.
None of the defendants immediately returned requests for comment on Wednesday.
