The publisher who is the owner of the copyrights to the “Smurf” cartoon characters served notice on a publisher who had used Smurf images in a schoolbook. The case gained public attention because the Smurf images were used in a schoolbook to describe the communist regime, comparing it to the characters’ life in their village.
It was learned that the Smurf copyrights owner is seeking economic indemnification and for the other publisher to withdraw the schoolbook from the market, while the latter has expressed its willingness to remove the image from the next edition of the book but without agreeing to take it out of circulation as published.
Source: El País