Muppet Whatnot Copyright Issue

[Slackbot]

I don't believe the folks who make Robot Chicken have had any issues with copyright, and they use action figures as puppets, representing the original characters.

If Robot Chicken can get away with that, I'd be surprised if you had any problem using a Whatnot, especially if you customized it a bit.

 

[Drtooth]

I don't know how Robot Chicken or Family Guy does it for that matter. I'm sure they have to make some arrangement, unless they have a wide parody copyright loophole. I know when the Simpsons used Archie that one time, they had to include Archie's page long copyright notice.

 

[Frogpuppeteer]

one of my teachers in college worked on robot chicken and from what he told me they do 2 things..first off they try not to buy any toys, most action figured they use are custom made/ their own collection/ or major donations...( ive actually given them some of mine) if they do buy thet hunt yard sales...when it comes to who and what they use.. Seth Green and Dan Milano (greg the bunny) pretty much have made friends with as many people as they can to get and like you said there is some form of parody loophole there

 

[Bear Man]

No. Not those ones. I'm talking about the episode where Kennith runs by an HD camera and turns into a Muppet

Having not seen the FAO Whatnots in person I can't be sure, but I imagine that this particular puppet was built as part of the same order for the puppets used in the "Apollo Apollo" episode. It definitely is not an off-the-shelf puppet, because I am almost certain the FAO muppets don't have a NBC page uniform or a blond wig as customisable options. The "Henson look" is a stylistic feature that can't really be copyrighted (as evidenced by the number of non-Henson puppets that still have similar stylistic features, e.g. fleece skin, plastic eyes, etc). By their very nature the "real" Whatnots are meant to be able to be customised into any number of characters, so I doubt very much it would be possible to copyright the base element. It's only when you get into the realm of identifiable character images (like Kermit, Fozzie, Piggy, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, etc) that they can be subject to things like copyright and trademark.