“We were buying the costume as a purple dinosaur because these kids wanted it at their birthday party,” says Vicki Williams, owner of the Rental Boutique in Santa Ana who received the letter last year. Shop owners say they assumed the dinosaurs were legal because they purchased them from a reputable costume company. It’s when it’s a purple dinosaur that it’s illegal, and it doesn’t matter what shade of purple, either,” Elsner Furman says. They might remove Barney’s head in front of the children, and Barney is real,” she says.Įven if they are not identified as “Barney,” all purple dinosaurs are an infringement, Lyons says. They might do something that might freak children out. There are a lot of things adults might do that Barney would not do. “We don’t have the ability to control who’s in the costume.
#Purple barney costume license
Lyons does not license adult-sized costumes because it fears that even well-meaning adults might act in an un-Barney-like way, she says. 1-rated TV program for children younger than 6, she says. Lyons has taken “aggressive” action against the owners to guard Barney’s image and to protect children who “love and trust Barney,” says Elsner Furman. That’s one mean purple dinosaur,” says Hal Rosner, a San Diego attorney who specializes in copyright and costume law and represents about 40 costume shops that have received the letters. “Lyons sent letters basically threatening them with financial extinction unless they paid them money. reported that Lyons has sought damages ranging from $7,500 to $75,000 per shop.
The letter demands that shop owners pay Lyons a fee and orders them to surrender their purple dinosaurs.
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