Good Grief: Peanuts Music Owner Sues the Feds and Three Companies for Copyright Infringement

The federal government may be the most formidable defendant in the American legal system, but it is not immune from a copyright lawsuit over a holiday social media post. Lee Mendelson Film Productions, the family-owned company that has controlled the Vince Guaraldi music catalog associated with the Peanuts television specials since 1963, filed four federal copyright infringement lawsuits on May 20, 2026, targeting the U.S. Department of the Interior, video game publisher GameMill Entertainment, auction house Heritage Auctions, and accessories manufacturer Buckle-Down Inc.. The suits were filed in federal courts in New York and Washington, D.C., and the company is seeking injunctions requiring all defendants to cease the alleged infringement immediately.

The Catalog at Stake

Guaraldi’s compositions for the Peanuts franchise, including Linus and Lucy, Christmas Time Is Here, Skating, and his arrangement of O Tannenbaum, have sold more than five million copies in the United States, according to Lee Mendelson Film Productions. The music debuted in the landmark 1965 special A Charlie Brown Christmas and has remained commercially and culturally central to the franchise ever since. Guaraldi died in February 1976. Lee Mendelson, who founded the production company and brought Guaraldi’s jazz sensibility to Charles Schulz’s characters, died on December 25, 2019.

Notably, Peanuts Worldwide LLC, which owns the rights to Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the other characters and was recently majority-acquired by Sony, is not a party to any of the four lawsuits. The music rights and the character rights are held separately, and it is the music catalog that is at the center of this litigation.

Four Defendants, Four Theories of Infringement

The lawsuit against the Department of the Interior arises from a digital holiday card distributed across the department’s social media accounts before Christmas 2025 that allegedly incorporated Guaraldi’s copyrighted arrangement of O Tannenbaum without a license. The department told the Associated Press it does not comment on litigation. Because the federal government has waived sovereign immunity for copyright claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1498(b), the suit was filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C.

The complaint against Heritage Auctions alleges that the auction house used Linus and Lucy in Facebook and Instagram posts promoting a sale of Peanuts collectibles. A Heritage representative told reporters the company had not yet been served and would review the allegations when it received the complaint.

The claim against Buckle-Down Inc. is similar in structure: the belt manufacturer, which holds a license to produce Peanuts-themed products, allegedly used Guaraldi’s music without authorization in its own social media advertising.

The GameMill case presents a distinct and more complex copyright theory. GameMill Entertainment licensed the Peanuts visual and character rights for its 2025 video game Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club but did not seek or obtain a license from Lee Mendelson Film Productions for the Guaraldi music catalog. The complaint alleges that the game features background music that is ‘substantially similar’ to Guaraldi compositions including Linus and Lucy and Skating. Lee Mendelson Film Productions is seeking at least $300,000 in damages from GameMill. The theory that new compositions designed to evoke a copyrighted original can themselves constitute infringement is well-established under the substantial similarity doctrine, though the outcome depends heavily on expert musicological analysis and the judgment of the factfinder.

A Broader Wave of Music Copyright Enforcement in Social Media

The Peanuts lawsuits land in the middle of an escalating industry campaign to recover licensing revenue lost to unauthorized music use in social media content. Warner Music Group sued retail chain DSW in May 2025, alleging infringement of more than 200 works in TikTok and Instagram posts. Sony Music filed suit against the University of Southern California over music used in the school’s social media content. In 2024, fourteen NBA teams were sued by music publishers including Kobalt over alleged unauthorized use of music in promotional videos. The pattern is consistent: rights holders are no longer treating social media posts as de minimis uses, and they are litigating accordingly.

The lead attorney for Lee Mendelson Film Productions, Marc Jacobson, framed the lawsuits in explicitly deterrent terms. He stated that the company will no longer tolerate the use of its property without a license, particularly in an era of instant digital sharing, and that the rights of creators and the protection of iconic cultural assets must be vigorously enforced.

What Businesses and Content Creators Should Take Away

The Interior Department’s situation illustrates a risk that many organizations overlook: the assumption that a well-known piece of music can be used in a social media post because it evokes a familiar character or holiday theme, without confirming that the relevant rights have actually been licensed. The character license and the music license are separate legal instruments, as GameMill’s experience underscores.

For technology companies and game publishers, the GameMill claim adds a second layer of caution. It is not enough to avoid directly copying a copyrighted recording. If a newly commissioned score is designed to sonically recall a protected composition, that design choice may itself create copyright exposure. The legal standard asks whether an ordinary listener would recognize the new work as appropriating the expression of the original.

The federal government defendant is unusual but not unprecedented. Congress waived the government’s sovereign immunity for copyright infringement under the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, though the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Allen v. Cooper limited that waiver with respect to state governments. The federal government remains suable under Section 1498(b), with damages awarded by the Court of Federal Claims rather than a district court.

The Bottom Line

Few catalogs in American popular culture carry the emotional weight of Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts compositions. The fact that Lee Mendelson Film Productions is now asserting those rights against a federal agency, a major auction house, a consumer products company and a video game publisher in a single enforcement campaign signals a meaningful shift in how legacy music rights holders are approaching the digital content environment. For any organization that uses music in social media, advertising or licensed products, the takeaway is straightforward: verify that every piece of music in every piece of content is covered by an appropriate license, and verify it before publication. The era of treating background music as a free aesthetic choice is over.