Decision: Hasbro Consumer Products v Công ty TNHH & Ors
Court: High Court (Intellectual Property List)
Judge: Mr Justice Richard Smith
Citation: [2026] EWHC 1957 (Ch)
Decision: Here
Key issues: Injunctions

Published: 11 August 2026
Authors: Eloise Ryan

Introduction

In Hasbro Consumer Products v Công ty TNHH & Ors, the English High Court has granted an (unusual) worldwide injunction in relation to aspects of Wolfoo, a popular preschool YouTube series.

Wolfoo was launched in 2018 and now has over 20 million subscriptions across its three major channels. It follows a young wolf, who lives with his family and friends, with episodes exploring everyday situations, adventures and games with Wolfoo.

In 2022 the makers of Peppa Pig brought infringement proceedings in the English courts, alleging, among other things:

• in the UK, copyright infringement, trade mark infringement and passing off
• in the EU, copyright infringement and trade mark infringement
• in jurisdictions subject to various international copyright conventions and treaties (such as the Rome Convention, TRIPS and WPPT), copyright infringement

The sound recording copyright claim

In June this year, the court granted summary judgment on a discrete aspect of the wider proceedings.

Here, the Claimants alleged that audio clips from Peppa Pig had been copied in Wolfoo, resulting in infringement of copyright in the sound recordings. To support their case, the Claimants relied on detailed technical evidence, using spectrogram analysis in respect of Peppa Pig videos and a representative sample of Wolfoo videos, showing identity.

In turn, the Defendants sought to raise doubts such as the identity, authorship and ownership of the copyright works, but failed to substantively challenge the evidence advanced by the Claimants.

The issue fell before Mr Justice Richard Smith, who concluded that the Defendants had no realistic prospect of successfully defending this aspect of the claim, giving summary judgment.

International copyright claims and the presumption of similarity

The question arose as to whether the finding of copyright infringement under English law may apply to other jurisdictions and, if so, whether an injunction should be granted.

The Defendants argued that copyright is territorial in nature and that the Claimants could not simply rely upon English copyright law when alleging infringement across numerous jurisdictions.

Having examined the "default rule" and the "presumption of similarity" in private international law, the Court explained that, where foreign law is pleaded and properly engaged, English law may nevertheless play a role if it is reasonable to assume that the foreign law is materially similar to English law such that it is unlikely to lead to a different substantive outcome.

The Claimants argued that this test was satisfied in relation to EU jurisdictions because UK copyright law historically developed in line with the Information Society Directive. In relation to other countries, they relied on the harmonising effect of international copyright instruments including the Rome Convention, TRIPS and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT).

The Court accepted those arguments and found that the Defendants had failed to identify any material differences between English law and the laws of the relevant foreign jurisdictions. In particularly forceful terms, the judge stated that it was not enough for the Defendants merely to assert a "bald belief" that material differences might exist and that further investigation would reveal them.

Representative sampling and large-scale online infringement

Another question arose as to whether the Defendants should obtain relief only in relation to the representative sample of Wolfoo video on which it relied, or all of them (which exceed some 30,000 videos).

The Court accepted evidence that the sampled videos were genuinely representative of the wider corpus, and that analysing every Wolfoo video would have been wholly disproportionate.  As a result, the Court was prepared to infer that further infringements would likely be identified if wider analysis were undertaken.

Injunction

The practical consequence of this was a remarkably broad injunction. The Court ordered the removal of all Wolfoo videos falling within the scope of the findings in all jurisdictions that are parties to the relevant international copyright conventions and treaties (rather than limiting relief to specific videos or specific jurisdictions).

Key takeaways

The key takeaways from the decision are that:

• in certain circumstances, the English courts are open for business to grant pan-jurisdictional injunctions in copyright disputes, which may serve as a cost-effective way of resolving international disputes
• the presumption of similarity remains a powerful procedural tool where Defendants fail to identify concrete differences between English law and applicable foreign laws
• courts may be willing to accept representative sampling as evidence of infringement across large bodies of online content where full analysis would be disproportionate
• international copyright treaties and harmonised copyright frameworks can provide strong support for cross-border enforcement strategies

Caveat

While the judgment is a buoy to copyright holders looking to enforce their rights globally and cost effectively, a note of caution:

• the success masks a prolonged (some four years to date) and ongoing dispute, with the court already having wrestled with pleading disputes and jurisdictional challenges
• sound recordings carry no originality threshold and the infringement was clear, meaning it was harder for the Defendants to point to any material difference between English law and other jurisdictions. This may not apply to other copyright claims
• the Defendants did not always attend the hearings and were not always legally represented
• this is a first instance decision

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