High Court decision ordering Wolfoo videos off YouTube shows how copyright law can reach across borders to protect billion-dollar brands
Peppa Pig's corporate owners have won a significant copyright battle in London's High Court. A judge has ordered every video featuring animated character Wolfoo removed from YouTube and other online platforms, ruling the copying of audio clips was “prolific” and “longstanding”.
The case pitted Hasbro — the US entertainment giant that owns Peppa Pig — against SConnect, the Vietnamese studio behind Wolfoo. At issue was SConnect’s unauthorised use of short audio clips from the British children’s show. The case, formally cited as Hasbro Consumer Products Licensing Ltd & Anor v SConnect Medica LLC & Ors [2026] EWHC 1546 (Ch), has put the global reach of copyright enforcement firmly in the spotlight.
What the court found
The numbers are stark. Sound clips from Peppa Pig turned up in all 92 English-language Wolfoo videos the court examined, and in 75 per cent of the foreign-language videos. SConnect argued early infringements were a third-party contractor’s fault, and that more recent content was independently produced. The court rejected both. The contractor argument was “irrelevant”. The claim of original production after mid-2020, the judge found, “can be disproved”.
Spectrographic analysis was central to the ruling. It showed ongoing reuse of recognisable audio — snorts, giggles, exclamations — that the court tied directly to the Peppa Pig brand. The Pelham v Kraftwerk standard applied: even brief samples infringe copyright if they are recognisable, according to a University of Oxford analysis of the ruling. The IPKat described the court’s view of SConnect’s defences as “the raising of much smoke” in the face of compelling evidence.
A franchise with enormous stakes
The money involved explains Hasbro’s aggression. Peppa Pig airs in 180 countries and pulls in more than $1 billion a year. Wolfoo had grown into a genuine threat. In three years it surpassed two billion monthly YouTube views, overtaking Peppa Pig. Hasbro had already pushed YouTube to remove thousands of Wolfoo videos, cutting monthly views from three billion to one billion. The court’s order takes care of the rest.
One thing the ruling does not do: find that Wolfoo looks too much like Peppa Pig. That fight — over visual style and trademark — is ongoing. Courts have been cooler on those claims. You cannot own a drawing style.
Cross-border enforcement and what it means for legal teams
SConnect tried to move the case to Vietnam. It argued the content was aimed at Vietnamese and American audiences. The court did not buy it. Advertising directed at UK viewers, combined with a failure to geoblock UK users, was enough to establish the UK as the proper forum.
Australian-based media companies, digital content platforms and anyone with a substantial online audience. The question of where overseas-produced content becomes actionable — and under whose law — is live and getting livelier. Not deploying geo-blocking tools is no longer a neutral decision. Courts will treat it as evidence.
AI-generated content and cross-border platform disputes are only going to produce more cases like this one. The spectrographic evidence standard — capable of catching even indirect audio copying — is a tool rights holders will use again.
For anyone advising clients on content protection, this case is worth reading carefully. The spectrographic evidence standard caught audio copying that SConnect insisted did not exist. Geo-blocking was treated not as a technical afterthought but as a legal obligation. Rights holders with deep pockets and valuable IP are watching. The next target may not have Wolfoo’s three billion monthly views — but the enforcement playbook is now written, and that lowers the evidential bar for rights holders ready to act.
