Owner of ‘Peanuts’ music sues Interior Department and 3 companies for copyright infringement
The owner of the music used in the “Peanuts” animated specials, including the unforgettable holiday classic “O Tannenbaum” and the iconic “Linus and Lucy” tunes, sued three companies and the U.S. Department of the Interior on Wednesday. It accused them of using his captivating bops in social media posts and a video game without permission.
Lee Mendelson Film Productions filed a copyright infringement suit in federal courts in New York and Washington, D.C. The songs are part of the programs that brought Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang from Charles Schulz’s comics off the page and into family living rooms.
Marc Jacobson, a lawyer for Lee Mendelson Film Productions, said during an interview Thursday that the company had been plagued by unauthorized use of its music and decided to “make a statement and file all four lawsuits on the same day..”
“We’ve written to people repeatedly and these four companies have either not responded or responded in a way that suggests they really don’t care that they’re using music without permission,” he said.
In addition to the US government, the three defendant companies are Heritage Auctions; Buckle-Down Inc., a belt company; and GameMill Entertainment, a video game publisher.
Mr. Jacobson noted that Lee Mendelson Film was particularly concerned with the use of tunes on some social media platforms. The company has no licensing agreements with the short video app TikTok, he said. Music that is allowed on Meta-owned apps, including Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, is only allowed for personal use and not for commercial purposes.
“We just don’t want to tolerate it anymore,” he said.
Lee Mendelson, an Emmy Award-winning producer, founded the production company in 1963. In 1965, he helped bring the holiday staple “A Charlie Brown Christmas” to television, followed by several other classics. He died in 2019 and his company is the publisher of the Vince Guaraldi Library of Charlie Brown music.
Guaraldi composed the original score for the “Peanuts” specials, which evokes the Schultz gang for audiences around the world. According to one of the lawsuits, his music became “indelibly associated with the Peanuts characters and movies.”
According to the lawsuit, the Interior Department used “O Tannenbaum” from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in a digital postcard posted on social media in December without permission.
Updated
Mr Jacobson said the action against the department was not about politics but “about the ability to control the use of copyrighted works”.
The U.S. government “took music that could be available for an individual to use on their Facebook page and turned it into promotional material for the Department of the Interior, and they can’t do that,” he said.
The Home Office said in an emailed statement on Thursday that it “does not comment on litigation”.
Lawsuits against Heritage Auction and Buckle-Down Inc. they also accuse companies of misusing music on social media. A lawsuit against a video game company says the music in the 2025 “Peanuts” video game “Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club” was too similar to Guaraldi’s tunes.
Christina Rees, a spokeswoman for Heritage Auctions, said the company “has not been served with or reviewed the complaint.”
“If and when we receive it, we will review the allegations and respond as appropriate,” she said.
Buckle-Down did not respond to a phone call seeking comment Thursday, and GameMill did not respond to an email request for comment Thursday.
Mr. Jacobson said there were a dozen other companies that used the “Peanuts” catalog without proper authorization and warned that he and his client would “continue on this path of enforcement.”.”
“Those letters will be sent out next week,” he said.