Sydney woman who sold a cartoon cat T-shirt told to pay US$100,000 in Grumpy Cat copyright case
Alda Curtis, a 63-year-old counselling student from Sydney, set up a Redbubble store as a hobby, including selling a T-shirt featuring an unhappy cat cartoon.
After years of running the store, a single sale of that T-shirt resulted in a US$100,000 default judgment against her for infringing on the trademark of Grumpy Cat late last year. Then Curtis noticed nearly US$600 had been taken from her PayPal account.
Grumpy Cat, also known as Tardar Sauce, shot to internet fame in 2012 due to her permanently grumpy facial expressions that were caused by a permanent underbite and feline dwarfism.
The American domestic cat became a symbol for everyone on the internet who felt disgruntled about life, with millions of followers on social media, memes, merchandise including clothing and soft toys, and even a fragrance.
At the peak of the cat's fame in 2014, the film Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever was released. It starred the grumpy cat herself, voiced by Aubrey Plaza. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an aggregate score of 27%.
The world of internet stardom moves on quickly, however, and Grumpy Cat's fame has dimmed since Tardar Sauce died in 2019, aged 7.
But the ghost of the frowny feline still haunts anyone trying to sell a product that could be confused with the real Grumpy Cat. The owner of the Grumpy Cat trademark is ever vigilant for unauthorised products sold online.
Last year, Grumpy Cat Ltd filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against more than 200 online sellers in an Ohio court. They sought damages for products sold on sites such as RedBubble that allegedly infringed on the trademark.
Alda Curtis, 63, received a default judgment against her for a T-shirt sold on RedBubble. Photograph: Supplied
In September last year, the court ruled a default judgment in favour of Grumpy Cat Ltd. The company was awarded damages of US$100,000 per defendant.
If the payments were made in full, the company would win more than US$24m.
The sellers have also been restrained from continuing to sell the products identified, forcing the removal from the online stores.
Curtis set up a Redbubble store as a hobby while studying counselling in the northern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. She first became aware of the Grumpy Cat Ltd case against her two weeks after the default judgment in Ohio.
The problem for Curtis was one item she sold: a T-shirt of a frowning purple and yellow cat. She said the sale had been made just before the US lawsuit was launched against her. The T-shirt had sat unsold for years on her site.
The design for the T-shirt had been licensed from a design website, titled 'Grumpy Cat Pattern Graphic T-shirt'. Curtis earned just over US$1 from the sale. In the six years she had been running her store, she had generated about US$200 in revenue.
Curtis said she had 'absolutely no intentions' of infringing the trademark. 'I've seen a picture of that cat, but I didn't even cross my mind that was in any copyright infringement or anything like that,' she said.
'So it was totally just a fluke, and they're taking advantage of that. If everyone in the world is going to be not allowed to call [a design] Happy Cat, Grumpy Cat, feathered cat, or whatever it might be … where does it end?'
In February, a few months after the ruling, Curtis discovered US$592.75 was missing from her PayPal account, without explanation. After multiple attempts to contact PayPal to try to get the money back, Curtis said PayPal referred her to Grumpy Cat's lawyers.
Others across the globe have found themselves in similar situations. There are posts on Reddit asking what to do after finding a default judgment has been made against them.
'I had no idea 'Grumpy Cat' was a thing. 'Grumpy Cat' was not even mentioned on my design neither looked my design like their stupid cat,' one poster said.
Prof Graeme Austin, chair in private law at Victoria University in New Zealand, said US trademark law gives courts powers to impose tough damages awards in infringement cases, including statutory damages of up to US$200,000.
'Wholesale default judgment proceedings in trademark and copyright cases are a familiar strategy for intellectual property owners,' he said.
skip past newsletter promotion
Sign up to Afternoon Update: Election 2025
Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key election campaign stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
after newsletter promotion
'They can be a useful tool for trademark owners – but they risk imposing very harsh remedies on individual defendants who might have had good defences if they had acted sooner.'
Austin said such cases were not unusual, and it was important for anyone served with a complaint to act quickly.
'The last thing you want is to be swept up in proceedings against a large group of other defendants. You want to be in the position to raise any defences as early as possible.'
Curtis said it could be a case of what has been termed 'SAD Scheme'. In a 2023 Columbia Law Review Forum article, Prof Eric Goldman described the 'Schedule A Defendants Scheme' in the northern district of Illinois – where the Grumpy Cat case was filed – targeting online merchants in China, mostly.
Goldman said the scheme allowed rights owners 'to extract settlements from online merchants without satisfying basic procedural safeguards like serving the complaint and establishing personal jurisdiction over defendants'.
Goldberg argued the scheme 'goes far beyond just curbing online infringement and instead causes substantial harm to innocent merchants'.
Australian copyright law expert Fiona Phillips said the US-based PayPal taking the US$592.75 from Curtis's account was the company enforcing its user agreement, which outlines funds may be taken in response to a court order.
'It is an interesting development in the enforcement of IP across national borders and a further reason for people to pay more attention to the terms and conditions,' she said.
Curtis is now battling to have the default judgment vacated.
In response to her filing in the court, lawyers for Grumpy Cat have argued that service was made to Curtis' Gmail account on 2 May 2024, and have sought to have the motion dismissed on the grounds that Curtis has filed the motion under her name, not in the name of the online seller name she had used. The company also argued that the trademark infringement was due to the name of the product being 'Grumpy Cat Pattern Graphic T-Shirt'.
Curtis said a search of her inbox shows no email from the lawyers until the first one she received in September.
A ruling has yet to be made.
Lawyers for Grumpy Cat offered to settle the case for US$1,000 in an email to Curtis in March, seen by Guardian Australia. Users on Reddit have reported similar offers.
In 2018, Grumpy Cat Ltd won $750,000 in damages from a US coffee company for violating the terms of their agreement to use the cat's image on a line of iced coffee drinks called 'Grumppuccinos'. Grumpy Cat's owners said the company had 'blatantly infringed' their copyrights and trademarks when they began selling roasted coffee and Grumppucino T-shirts featuring Tardar Sauce's face.
As of 2024, it was reported that Grumpy Cat Ltd had filed more than 50 lawsuits related to the use of Grumpy Cat in unauthorised merchandise.
Grumpy Cat's lawyers and PayPal were contacted for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time Magazine
33 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
The 14 Best Books of 2025 So Far
There's no better time than the start of summer to take a pause and reset your priorities. And, if we may be so bold, one of those priorities really should be to dig into one of the many great new books that have been published this year. It's only June, and yet we've already been blessed with a wealth of heart-rending memoirs, absorbing novels, and mind-expanding nonfiction. Meander through the beguiling mind of a theater actress, take a siblings road trip that challenges the very notion of family, or delve into a deep, personal secret. Here, the 14 best books of the year so far. The Antidote, Karen Russell It feels like the U.S. has lived 100 lifetimes since Karen Russell's much-lauded 2011 debut Swamplandia!, but it's safe to say that her highly anticipated follow-up The Antidote was worth the wait. An American epic that takes place in the 1930s in the fictional town of Uz, Neb., the story centers on a prairie witch who calls herself 'the Antidote.' A healer of sorts, the Antidote, like other prairie witches, is a keeper of others' thoughts—a memory vault who absorbs the heaviness of people's grief so they may have a chance at feeling lightness again. But when a dust bowl devastates the town, it takes the witch's memory deposits with it and leaves her fearful for her safety. What will happen to her when people can no longer unload their worst—and have to actually live with themselves? Told from the vantage point of multiple inhabitants of Uz, The Antidote is a sprawling yet meticulous story that implores us to see American history in its fullness, scars and all.— Rachel Sonis Audition, Katie Kitamura's taut and incisive follow-up to Intimacies, begins on a rich premise. The narrator, a successful actress navigating a difficult new role, goes to a Manhattan restaurant to meet a younger man, Xavier, who claims he's her son. It's impossible. The actress, who goes unnamed, has never given birth or been a parent. But the strange encounter isn't their last; Xavier begins working on the same play, and his bold assertion prompts her to unravel the many choices and performances that have brought her to this particular moment, on stage and in life. Halfway through, Audition changes realities, completely redefining the relationship between the two. Kitamura's tantalizing novel asks a lot of the reader, offering multiple versions of the same life that circle around an idea raised by the protagonist herself:'As you get older things become less clear.' —Mahita Gajanan In his second novel, Ocean Vuong sheds the epistolary conceit of his acclaimed debut, 2019's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. The result is a more sprawling yet direct coming-of-age tale animated by the specificity of its characters. When we meet 19-year-old Hai, he's standing ominously on a bridge in his depressed hometown of East Gladness, Conn. His first love is dead of a fentanyl overdose and his mom believes the flimsy lie that he's at medical school, leaving Hai with a craving for opioids and nowhere to go. Before he can do anything drastic, he's spotted by a dementia-stricken elderly woman, Grazina, who must sense his fundamental gentleness, because she says he can move into her place if he'll care for her. Along with his misfit coworkers at a fast-food joint, Grazina anchors the lost boy, even as her own mind drifts from its moorings. A premise that a lesser writer might churn into inspiration porn becomes, in Vuong's hands, a vivid, funny, emotionally realistic case study in the life-altering potential of community.— Judy Berman There are many debut novels about young people finding love and seeking purpose, but few are as perceptive about the connection between those pursuits as Naomi Xu Elegant's ruminative Gingko Season. Stubbornly fixated on a college boyfriend who broke her heart, 20-something narrator Penelope Lin works at a Philadelphia museum, pores over the city's history, and maintains a modest social life, largely disconnected from her family. When she meets a guy, Hoang, who has just confessed to freeing mice marked for death at the lab where he works, their excruciatingly slow-moving courtship pushes Penelope to think harder about her own principles and priorities. Elegant's writing is as unassuming as her heroine, yet the questions she raises about how to live with integrity in a compromised world can be startlingly profound.— Judy Berman The argument that flows from this book is simple: rivers, for all of the essential nutrients, biodiversity, and transportation possibilities they provide, deserve to be treated with the same respect as other living organisms. Robert Macfarlane visited three rivers, starting with the River of the Cedars in an Ecuadorian cloud forest, recently threatened by mining companies. He surveyed waterways in Chennai, India, which flood streets with crocodiles and catfish after cyclones. And he visited Mutehekau Shipu in Quebec, the first Canadian river to be given rights, including the right to be pollution-free. The author of Underland lends his expertise to raise awareness about a part of nature that is often taken for granted. Readers see that while rivers can be easily wounded, they can also quickly heal—if given the right care.— Olivia B. Waxman Ron Chernow, the author of the best-selling tomes Alexander Hamilton and Grant, offers a frank assessment of Mark Twain, the first major literary celebrity in the U.S. and a leading pundit of the Civil War era whose writings helped Americans make sense of life after slavery. While his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn became classics, Twain made poor financial decisions that bankrupted him and forced him to flee the country and spend nearly a decade in exile. Chernow's biography gives the encyclopedic treatment to the writer, boasting about 1,200 pages based on his books, letters, and unpublished manuscripts. —Olivia B. Waxman In this dystopian speculative fiction novel, Vietnamese Americans are shipped to internment camps following a terrorist attack, with their civil rights and dignity stripped in the name of national security. While the premise could result in an overly dour or preachy book, Nguyen's novel zips forward with page-turning suspense, humor, and nuance. The book revolves around four half-siblings as they each confront difficult ethical choices and navigate their relationships with an oppressive state, cultural expectations, and each other. While parts of the novel are carefully grounded in history—especially in the experience of Japanese-American incarceration during World War II—the book also crackles with modern culture and proves gaspingly relevant in an era of division and heightened surveillance.— Andrew R. Chow At the center of Nicole Cuffy's O Sinners! is Faruq Zaidi, a Brooklyn-based journalist grieving the recent death of his devout Muslim father. After learning about a cult called 'the nameless,' whose followers abide by teachings like "create beauty" and "do not despair at death," Faruq—a skeptic who has felt disconnected from faith and religion since he was a teenager—travels to their compound in the California Redwoods to report a story. But as he grows closer to the group's inscrutable leader, a Black Vietnam War veteran called Odo, Faruq begins to question more than just the secret inner-workings of the cult itself. O Sinners! is driven by three alternating narratives: Faruq's present day work trip, Odo's tour of duty in Vietnam, and the screenplay of a documentary about a legal battle between the cult and a fundamentalist church in Texas. In weaving together these stories, Cuffy explores the varying shapes that grief, belief, and belonging can take. —Erin McMullen In late October 2023, Omar El Akkad started to outline his feelings about the war in Gaza, and how it feels to be a person unanchored from home. In his urgent nonfiction debut, the writer—who was born in Cairo, grew up in Doha, moved to Canada, and now lives in rural Oregon—wrestles with his disillusionment with the West and its institutions, particularly given the indifference he's observed in so many as the war rages on. This memoir-manifesto could be seen as hopeless, and there is certainly no shortage of carnage in its pages. But, in the determination of those standing up for their beliefs, El Akkad manages to find hope amid the fantasy of Western liberalism.— Meg Zukin In Kevin Wilson's latest novel, Mad spends her days working on a farm with her mom. She hasn't seen her dad in two decades and she's settled into a routine that's not particularly fulfilling, but she's made her peace with that. Then, a stranger appears at her front door and announces that he's her older half-brother, and that their father pulled a disappearing act on not just him and Mad, but other families too. He convinces her to join him on a cross-country road trip to round up their other siblings and find their father. What ensues is an often hilarious and sometimes devastating exploration of what really makes a family. Like Wilson's other fiction, including Nothing to See Here and Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Run for the Hills gently tugs at the heart.— Annabel Gutterman Sky Daddy is a love story, but one we're willing to bet is unlike any love story you've previously encountered. Drawing inspiration from Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Kate Folk's debut novel revolves around one woman's pursuit of her own white whale: finding her aircraft 'soulmate.' That's really the premise: our eccentric protagonist, Linda, wants to fall in love with a plane—and, in a morbid twist, she wants to 'consummate' that relationship by dying in an aviation accident. Linda is a San Francisco transplant who makes $20 an hour moderating hate comments for a video-sharing platform and devotes as much of that meager salary as possible to exploring the aircraft dating pool by catching flights. Linda is determined to keep her unusual proclivities a secret, but after her work friend, Karina, invites her to a monthly 'Vision Board Brunch' with some old college friends, Linda's attempts to manifest her idea of romantic bliss end up setting her on a path to radical self-acceptance. Sky Daddy is as poignant as it is bizarre— Megan McCluskey The Tell, Amy Griffin Rarely, if ever, has a book been endorsed by all three titans in the celebrity book club world—Oprah, Reese Witherspoon, and Jenna Bush Hager—but Amy Griffin's The Tell is no ordinary memoir. For readers of Tara Westover's Educated or Chanel Miller's Know My Name, The Tell is one of those deeply personal stories that manages to feel universal at the same time. Griffin was thriving as a businesswoman and happily married mother of four in New York City when a session with an MDMA therapist flooded her mind with long-buried memories. Suddenly, she remembered the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of a teacher starting when she was 12 years old. Shattered and enraged, Griffin struggled to reconcile her past with her carefully constructed self-image and grappled with the weight of carrying such a harrowing secret. Her memoir retraces her steps through her private grief and isolating pursuit of justice, and, ultimately, her powerful realization that to tell is to heal.— Lucy Feldman After her teenage son James dies by suicide, Yiyun Li begins writing. It's what she knows how to do. The prolific author has, tragically, been in this position before. Her older son, Vincent, died by suicide in 2017. In her transcendent new book, she writes that she does not ruminate on grief, because to grieve suggests a process to which there is an end. She knows that to continue living is to accept that she will be a parent to her children for the rest of her life. In sparing prose that cuts deeply, Li examines the relationship between language and loss, honoring the sons who she carries with her, always.— Annabel Gutterman Emma Pattee's Tilt is an apocalyptic nightmare come to life. Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping at Ikea when Oregon is hit with 'the big one'—the earthquake that people in the Pacific Northwest have been anticipating for years. Pattee's thrilling debut tracks Annie's journey through rubble, chaos, hope, and despair as she searches for her husband amid the disaster. Tilt is a propulsive account of survival, and how humanity shows up under the pressure of a catastrophe. As she treks across Portland, Annie flashes back to moments that shed light on her life choices thus far. Her marriage and career are thrust under a microscope as she encounters others in crisis: the wounded, the searching, the lost, and the desperate. Best read in one sitting, Tilt is a raw examination of motherhood and its most extreme demands.— Meg Zukin
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
Owner Leaves Dog Alone With Relaxing Music—Unprepared for What Petcam Shows
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A viral video of an American XL bully named Ragnar has warmed the hearts of viewers on TikTok—thanks to his hilariously chill reaction to some relaxing tunes. The video, which was posted to Instagram by the pet's owners on June 4, shows Ragnar fully sprawled out on his dog bed, front legs extended and head buried contently on the cushion, exuding total peace. An overlaid text on the video added more context: "Left my dog home alone with relaxing music… This is what I saw when I checked the camera… I think it worked." The caption read: "10/10 would recommend dog relaxing music!" There is some science behind the lighthearted post, because music—particularly classical music—is proven to have a soothing effect on dogs. Research by the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and the University of Glasgow found that classical music can reduce stress levels in canines a significant amount. In the 2015 study, researchers observed dogs in a shelter and found a notable decrease in stress behaviors, such as barking and pacing, when classical music was played around them. The American Kennel Club also recommends soft classical or reggae music for dogs who suffer from separation anxiety, noting that the rhythm and tempo help promote a sense of stability and security. Since it was posted, the video from @ragnarthebullyxl has racked up over 400,000 likes and more than 1.4 million views on the platform. The comments section is flooded with users expressing laughter and amazement at the canine's tranquil state, with one commenter writing, "Dude's sleeping like he pays the bills." "'Pit bulls are mean' literally pit bulls:" Another viewer said. "Now I feel better for leaving my dog relaxing music," another added. "OMG I do this for my dog everyday when I'm out and she is always dead asleep," a third viewer shared. "Him sleeping like that while [you are] at work paying for that TV to stay on so he can listen to his music," another said. "This is literally what my dog does if not he's watching Bluey and people get made I leave him alone trust me he's living his life," another added. Newsweek reached out to @ragnarthebullyxl for more information via email. An American bully sleeps soundly on the floor. An American bully sleeps soundly on the floor. Getty Images Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@ with some details about your best friend and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Matt Damon box office bomb with only 47% on RT becomes Netflix smash hit
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Despite his string of hit roles in everything from Good Will Hunting and The Bourne Identity to, most recently, Oppenheimer, not everything Matt Damon stars in is as successful. However, one of his biggest bombs is finding a new life after becoming a smash hit on Netflix. Released in 2017, Downsizing wasn't well received. It has just 47% on Rotten Tomatoes and was a box office bomb after its $55 million earnings failed to match its budget. However,in the UK, it was added to Netflix on Thursday, May 22, and it's been steadily climbing Netflix's rankings and gaining viewers. At the time of writing two weeks later, it's the streamer's most-watched movie. Living in the US? Downsizing is free via Hoopla and Kanopy but is only available to buy or rent digitally beyond those options. Downsizing is part romance, part comedy and part sci-fi story. It's set in a world in which humans invent 'downsizing', a process by which people are irreversibly shrunk to about five inches, which makes them more space efficient thereby solving overpopulation and the climate crisis. Damon plays Paul, who decides to go through the process with his wife Aubrey (Kristin Wiig)... until she pulls out at the last minute and leaves him. Stuck in his small form, and seeing his life fall apart, Paul goes on a voyage through the small 'Leisureland' in order to find himself and redefine his life. Critics of 2017 criticized Downsizing for being a bit muddled in its focus, though it's worth pointing out that certain reviewers really loved it. As someone who watched the movie in cinemas back then, it's safe to say that the movie was mis-marketed in a way that hurt it: posters and adverts made it look like a standard American comedy, but it's anything but. In a way, Downsizing is an exploration of the climate crisis and humanity's longevity, dealing with themes of class struggles and impending extinction events. It can get dark and melancholy at times, which isn't what audiences would really expect from a Matt Damon rom-com. That's likely why Downsizing was received so poorly eight years ago. It's not a bad film, but if you're expecting a lighthearted comedy, you're going to be disappointed. The movie was directed by Alexander Payne, also known for The Descendants and The Holdovers, and if you've seen those fantastic movies, you'll have your expectations better aligned for Downsizing. Downsizing climbing up Netflix's rankings makes sense: people have probably forgotten any expectations created by marketing 8 years ago, the streamer's thumbnails make it seem more of a sci-fi story than a comedy, and its genre tags are "cerebral" and "imaginative" which better fits the movie. The movie isn't actually the only pre-Covid Hollywood flop on the top-10 movies list and if you want something more action-packed, the Taron Edgerton and Jamie Foxx Robin Hood from 2018 is at #4 after being added on Sunday, June 1. Rounding out the list is Netflix Original A Widow's Game at #2, Channel 4 doc Accused: The Hampstead Paedophile Hoax at #3, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning at #5, stalwart The Super Mario Bros. Movie at #6, another Netflix movie The Heart Knows at #7, The Cat in the Hat at #8, Netflix doc A Deadly American Marriage at #9 and yet another kids movie Minions at #10.
