Peru's IP Authority Rules for Warner Bros in Unauthorized

By Espinosa Bellido Abogados

Peru's National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property, known as Indecopi, has ruled in favor of Turner Entertainment Co., the Warner Bros. Discovery subsidiary that holds the rights to "Tom and Jerry," in an administrative proceeding against the Peruvian company Industria e Import Olgui S.A.C.

The agency's Copyright Commission found that the importer committed a serious infringement by bringing protected merchandise into the country without the corresponding authorization, violating the rights holder's exclusive right to control importation of its work.

According to the Indecopi resolution, the case originated in late 2025, when personnel from Peru's national customs and tax authority, Sunat, inspected a shipment during a routine review of an import declaration. Officials noted that several items listed as a battery-operated musical cat toy and character masks bore designs matching the animated characters. That finding led to the seizure of 1,500 masks and 720 battery-powered toys. The importer argued in its defense that the products were generic and distinct from the copyrighted works, noting that one figure appeared on four legs like an ordinary animal rather than the semi-humanized form of the original character.

The Copyright Commission rejected that argument, concluding that the merchandise reproduced the artistic works "Tom" and "Jerry" without authorization, citing the products' color schemes and facial features as consistent with internationally registered designs. As a result, the agency declared the complaint well-founded and imposed a fine of 2.36 tax units, a Peruvian administrative unit used to calculate penalties, based on the estimated illicit profit the importer stood to gain from selling the goods. The resolution also ordered the permanent forfeiture of all seized items, along with the costs of the administrative proceeding, with the confiscated merchandise to be handed over to Turner Entertainment as the affected rights holder.

The ruling represents a first-instance administrative decision, and the sanctioned company retains the right to appeal. Under Indecopi's procedural rules, filing an appeal would suspend enforcement of the penalty until a final decision is issued by the Chamber of the Tribunal for the Defense of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property. Alternatively, Peruvian law allows the fine to be reduced by 25 percent if the company accepts the ruling and pays within a 15-day window without filing a formal objection.

The decision adds to a series of recent enforcement actions by Indecopi against unauthorized imports of licensed characters into Peru. In July, the agency imposed a fine of 360 tax units, split evenly between importation and distribution violations, on a Peruvian company for bringing in large quantities of counterfeit merchandise featuring Labubu, a character owned by the Chinese company Pop Mart; that shipment reportedly included hundreds of thousands of items detected through a Sunat customs alert.

A separate case earlier in the year resulted in a smaller fine against another importer for bringing in unauthorized Labubu-branded dolls. According to Indecopi, the agency oversees roughly 50 million soles in seizures annually and issues around 250 fines each year for trademark and copyright violations, with electronics, clothing and footwear among the categories most frequently affected by counterfeiting.