EFF successfully defended the free speech rights of a website publisher who had repeatedly received baseless threats from the corporate owners of Barney the Dinosaur. The Lyons Partnership wrongly claimed that Dr. Stuart Frankel's online parody of Barney violated copyright and trademark laws.
On August 23, 2006, EFF asked a federal court in New York to uphold Stuart Frankel's online parody of Barney as non-infringing protected speech. In November, the Lyons Partnership agreed to withdraw their baseless legal threats and to compensate Frankel for fees expended in defending himself.
This isn't the first time Barney's lawyers have wrongly threatened web publishers. In fact, they sent one of their unfounded threats to EFF in 2001, when we mirrored another non-infringing parody. At that time, EFF sent a response, which attempted to correct Barney's lawyers' prehistoric understanding of copyright and trademark laws. We also publicized their threats and sent out a call for others who had been threatened by Barney. That's when Stuart first contacted us.
EFF hopes this case will help put an end to Barney's unfounded threats once and for all, and serve as a lesson to other overreaching rights holders.
