Internet celebrity Grumpy Cat has a big reason to smile. Grumpy Cat Limited, which is owned by Tabatha Bundesen has been awarded $710,001 in a lawsuit because of a coffee company for exceeding the terms of a deal on using the image of the cat on its products.
Grenade Beverage, a Californian coffee company had signed an agreement according to which they can use cat for endorsing “Grumpy Cat Grumppuccino” only, but they used the cat’s image for selling other products too. The court decided that Grenade’s owners will pay the damages as they breached Grumpy Cat Limited’s copyright.
Grumpy Cat has a company with her name and a wide range of merchandise including clothing, toys, and calendars. The real name of Grumpy Cat is Tardar Sauce and it went viral on the internet in 2012 with the photographs that were shared by the brother of this cat’s owner. Still, many memes are made using the images of this cat. In 2013 Grenade Beverage made a deal of $150,000 for using the images of Grumpy Cat on the packaging of iced coffee beverages. But only a year after this contract Grumpy Cat Limited sued them for using the images on other products too.
The company also revealed that the owners of the Grenade Beverage had also told them that Grumpy Cat will also get a place in a movie but that never happened.
For solving the issue, a California federal jury ordered a payment of $710,000 for copyright and trademark infringement, along with a $1 nominal fee for breaching the contract. The cat herself appeared in some trials but was not present during the verdict.
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