The owner of music used in \u201cPeanuts\u201d animated specials, including the memorable holiday classic \u201cO Tannenbaum\u201d and the unmistakable \u201cLinus and Lucy\u201d tunes, sued three companies and the U.S. Department of the Interior on Wednesday. It accused them of using its captivating bops in social media posts and a video game without permission.<\/p>\n
Lee Mendelson Film Productions filed the copyright infringement suits 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<\/a>\u2019s comic strips off the page and into families\u2019 living rooms. <\/p>\n Marc Jacobson, a lawyer for Lee Mendelson Film Productions, said during an interview on Thursday that the company had been plagued by unauthorized use of its music and decided to \u201cmake a statement and file all four lawsuits on the same day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve written demand letters to people over and over again, and these four companies either didn\u2019t respond to us or they responded in a way that indicated they really didn\u2019t care that they were using the music without permission,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In addition to the U.S. government, the three accused companies are Heritage Auctions, an auction house; Buckle-Down Inc., a belt company; and GameMill Entertainment, a video game publisher.<\/p>\n Mr. Jacobson noted that Lee Mendelson Film was especially concerned with usage of the tunes on some social media platforms. The company does not have any licensing deals with the short video app TikTok, he said. The music that is allowed on the apps owned by Meta, including Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, is only authorized for personal use, not commercial purposes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just don\u2019t want to tolerate it anymore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Lee Mendelson, an Emmy Award-winning producer, started the production company in 1963. He helped put the holiday staple \u201cA Charlie Brown Christmas\u201d<\/a> on television in 1965, followed by several other classics. He died<\/a> in 2019, and his company is the publisher of the Vince Guaraldi Library of Charlie Brown music.<\/p>\n Guaraldi composed the original music for the \u201cPeanuts\u201d specials that evokes Schultz\u2019s gang for audiences worldwide. His music \u201chas become indelibly associated with the Peanuts characters and films,\u201d according to one of the lawsuits.<\/p>\n According to the lawsuit, the Interior Department used \u201cO Tannenbaum\u201d from \u201cA Charlie Brown Christmas\u201d in a digital holiday card posted in December to social media without permission.<\/p>\n Updated\u00a0<\/p>\n May 21, 2026, 6:40 p.m. ET<\/p>\n Mr. Jacobson said the suit against the department was not about politics, but \u201cabout the ability to control the use of the copyrighted works.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. government \u201ctook music that might be available for an individual to use on their Facebook page and turned it into a promotional piece for the Department of the Interior, and they can\u2019t do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Interior Department said in emailed statement on Thursday that it does not \u201chave comment on litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n The lawsuits against Heritage Auction and Buckle-Down Inc. also accuse the companies of misusing the music on social media. The suit against the video game company says that the music in the 2025 \u201cPeanuts\u201d video game \u201cSnoopy & The Great Mystery Club\u201d was too similar to Guaraldi\u2019s tunes.<\/p>\n Christina Rees, a spokeswoman for Heritage Auctions, said the company \u201chas not been served with or reviewed the complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf and when we receive it, we will review the allegations and respond as appropriate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Buckle-Down did not respond to a phone call requesting comment on Thursday, and GameMill did not reply to an emailed request for comment on Thursday.<\/p>\n Mr. Jacobson said there were a dozen other companies who had used the \u201cPeanuts\u201d catalog without proper authorization, and warned that he and his client would \u201ccontinue on this path of enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThose letters will be going out next week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The owner of music used in \u201cPeanuts\u201d animated specials, including the memorable holiday classic \u201cO Tannenbaum\u201d and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[283254,283250,88,283251,68538,33410,283253,283252,216,108,259957,21,63852,110088],"class_list":["post-657341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-a-charlie-brown-christmas-album","tag-copyrights-and-copyright-violations","tag-entertainment","tag-guaraldi","tag-heritage-auctions","tag-interior-department","tag-lee-1933-2019","tag-mendelson","tag-music","tag-social-media","tag-suits-and-litigation-civil","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-vince"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}