Paddington Bear vs Spitting Image: When Parody Crosses the Copyright Line
- David Salariya
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
A National Treasure Meets the Satirical Guillotine
If Britain has an unofficial saint, it’s a bear in a duffle coat. For more than six decades, Paddington Bear has stood for decency, politeness, and marmalade-smeared moral clarity. So when Spitting Image released a sketch portraying Paddington as a red-eyed, foul-mouthed Peruvian coke-head, Britain’s upper lip did what it does best: trembled.
Now StudioCanal, the rights-holder behind the Paddington films, has filed a High Court complaint against Avalon, the producers of Spitting Image, citing copyright and design-rights infringement. What looks like a spat over taste is, in truth, a textbook case about the limits of parody in the age of licensed characters.
The Legal Honey Trap: Copyright, Design & Brand Dilution
Paddington Bear is not in the public domain. Michael Bond’s original 1958 creation remains protected by copyright in both text and character.Over time, StudioCanal and its partners have built a brand ecosystem around him - films, merchandise, trademarks, even official collaborations with Buckingham Palace.
So the claim isn’t simply about hurt feelings. It’s about:
Copyright infringement – copying the character’s protected appearance, name, and mannerisms.
Design-right and trademark breach – reproducing a registered likeness for commercial use.
Passing off and brand dilution – damaging the goodwill of a trusted family property.
A Paddington Bear who snorts “catastrophic cocaine” is not just a joke; in IP law, he’s a reputational hazard.
Parody: Britain’s Narrow Escape Clause
Since 2014, UK law has allowed “fair dealing for the purposes of caricature, parody or pastiche.”It sounds generous, but it’s hedged with caveats: the parody must be transformative, proportionate, and non-damagingto the original’s reputation.
In other words, you can lampoon Paddington; you can’t use him to sell a YouTube series by masquerading as the real thing. Unlike the United States, where the First Amendment shields satire broadly, British law weighs humour against harm - and in the case of a beloved children’s brand, the scales tend to favour the bear.
Why StudioCanal Had to Sue
Even if StudioCanal found the sketch merely tasteless, they were legally compelled to respond. Trademark law punishes indifference: fail to defend your brand, and you risk genericide - the slow death of distinctiveness that once turned “aspirin” and “escalator” into common nouns.
A silent Paddington would set a dangerous precedent. The next infringer could claim: “But you didn’t object last time.”
So this isn’t a culture-war tantrum; it’s corporate hygiene.
When a Bear Becomes a Business
Paddington began life as an immigrant orphan with good manners. He is now a global commodity - part literary figure, part marketing saint. And therein lies the modern absurdity: we no longer protect characters for their cultural worth, but for their commercial purity.
In a way, Spitting Image accidentally proved its point.
The bear has become too valuable to mock.
The Larger Question
At what point does satire become brand theft? When a corporate mascot is as recognisable as a royal, does parody still count as public discourse - or as trespassing on private property?
Paddington’s polite defence of his reputation may feel un-British, but in 2025’s copyright jungle, even marmalade must lawyer up.
Michael Bond & The Great British Bear Affair
How a shy BBC cameraman and a forlorn toy rewrote children’s books and why Britain can’t stop loving bears
The Night a Toy Bear Changed Everything
Christmas Eve, 1956. Michael Bond, a young BBC television cameraman, tired, underpaid, goes into Selfridges in Oxford St, London for a last-minute stocking filler. On a shelf: a small glove-puppet bear, sitting alone, radiating loneliness. He buys it. Names it, naturally, after a railway station. And then, as only happens in origin stories and very good publishing lunches he sits at a typewriter in his Notting Hill flat and, in ten days, writes a book about a polite refugee bear who arrives in London with a label round his neck and a worrying talent for chaos.In October 1958, A Bear Called Paddington was published. Britain never quite recovers.
Berkshire to BBC: Apprenticeship of a Storyteller
Thomas Michael Bond (b. 13 January 1926, Newbury) grew up in Reading with books “part of the furniture,” a quiet father who never left the house without a hat, and a mother whose judgement was excellent except in the matter of a Catholic school blazer. He loathed the regime, fled school at 14, dodged death in a 1943 air raid, joined the RAF (air-sickness), then the Army (Middlesex Regiment, Middle East), and discovered the narcotic of acceptance letters when a magazine paid him seven guineas for a short story written on an army typewriter.
Back in civvy street, he joined the BBC - first Monitoring at Caversham Park (émigrés, radios, great copy), then TV camerawork in the glorious chaos of 1950s live broadcasting. He wrote on the side: radio plays, comic prose, anything to keep the door to authorship ajar.
The birth of Paddington Bear: The Selfridges Bear, The Evacuees, and “Please Look After This Bear”
The origin spark is famous: a lonely toy. The story’s emotional charge is British social history. Bond had watched evacuee children on station platforms during the war, each with a suitcase and a label round the neck. Paddington’s tag is more than a gag; it’s a memory. He first imagined “darkest Africa,” was reminded there are no native bears, then sensibly shipped his hero in from Peru via Aunt Lucy.Mr Gruber, the kindly antique dealer, is modelled on Bond’s agent, Harvey Unna, a Jewish refugee; the Browns are the sensible parents you desperately hope to have; and the tone? Kindness strapped to chaos with Sellotape. The jokes land because the manners are sincere.
Ten Days, Seven Rejections, and One Fortnum
Bond “bashed out” the first draft in a burst, then collected a small bouquet of rejections. Collins finally said yes, offering £75 and commissioning Peggy Fortnum, whose ink-wash line (all floppy hat and determined duffle) fixed Paddington’s silhouette for a century. The sequel arrived in 1959; by 1965 Bond resigned from the BBC with the immortal logic that one cannot abandon a bear mid-adventure.
From Windsor Gardens to the World
Through the 1960s - 70s, chapter books, story collections and picture-book spin-offs made Paddington a household name. The FilmFair/Ivor Wood stop-motion TV series (with Sir Michael Hordern narrating) sealed the deal; generations learned that disasters are survivable if tackled politely and with marmalade.Translations multiplied; sales soared into the tens of millions; by the 2000s, Paddington was fluent in forty-plus languages and Latin on a good day. In 2014 the films arrived (Ben Whishaw’s tender voice; Bond’s cameo at the station): critically adored, culturally absorbed. The sequel (2017) did what sequels seldom do - upped the charm.
A Queen, a Sandwich, a Nation
In 2022, Paddington shared tea with Queen Elizabeth II for the Platinum Jubilee short. He produced a marmalade sandwich from under his hat; she replied, deadpan, that she kept one in her handbag “for later.” It was perfect British theatre: kindness, timing, understatement. The sketch instantly canonised Paddington as a national emissary of good manners, and, poignantly, became one of the last public moments by which the country remembers the late Queen.
The Author as Brand Custodian (and Bear’s Best Friend)
Bond was early to something modern: character stewardship. He established Paddington & Co., approved designs, said no to the tacky (toilet rolls were a hard pass), and pursued knock-offs with the zeal of a small law firm in a duffle coat. The load was heavy; he admitted to burnout and the odd stiff drink. But he kept the faith: “There is something so upright about Paddington. I wouldn’t want to let him down.”When an ad campaign once tempted the bear toward Marmite, Bond wrote to The Times — gently, firmly, to re-assert the primacy of marmalade. That’s (note to some shady publishers) moral rights, the English way.
Beyond the Bear: Herbs, Guinea Pigs & Gourmet Mysteries
He was prolific: The Herbs on TV; Olga da Polga in books (inspired by the family guinea pigs); and, for adults, the comic detective Monsieur Pamplemousse, farce, food, and felonies in France, written in monthly Parisian bursts. Honours followed: OBE (1997), CBE (2015). He wrote daily into his nineties; Paddington’s Finest Hour appeared weeks before his death in June 2017, age 91.
At Paddington Station, the bronze bear under the clock continues his quiet shift: greeting children, anchoring memories, just as Bond intended.
Why the British Love Bears (and Why It Matters)
Britain has a thing about bears. Consider the canon: Winnie-the-Pooh (Milne/Shepard), Rupert Bear (Mary Tourtel & the Daily Express), Paddington (Bond/Fortnum), Old Bear (Jane Hissey), We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Rosen/Oxenbury). Even Baloo’s British literary parentage is Kipling.
What’s going on?
1) The Teddy as a National Comfort Object. The “teddy” emerged circa 1902–04 (Roosevelt in the US; Steiff in Germany), and the UK promptly domesticated it. Post-war Britain, ration books, quiet grief, rebuilding, needed a soft avatar of resilience. A bear is wild with the corners rounded off.
2) Politeness vs. Chaos - the British gag. Our comedy lives where manners collide with mishap: tea meets catastrophe. Bears specialise in this. Pooh’s philosophical muddle; Rupert’s brisk confidence; Paddington’s courtesy barreling toward a paint tin.
Disaster, but make it tidy.
3) Class without cruelty. Anthropomorphic animals let you riff on class, authority and bureaucracy without punching down. The Brown family, the Bank, the Station Official - the satire smiles, never sneers. You can give a Prime Minister a hard stare and still be welcome for tea.
4) The Refugee Thread. From Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood (a chosen family) to Paddington’s label, British bear stories smuggle in belonging: adoption, kindness to strangers, the right to a sandwich and a say. It’s liberal humanism in a duffle coat.
5) Graphic clarity. Design matters. Pooh’s roundness, Rupert’s distinctive check jumper, Paddington’s red hat/blue coat, unmistakable silhouettes. They work on postage stamps, lunchboxes and cinema screens. Recognition is power; bears have it.
In short: British bears are portable ethics. They make decency fashionable, curiosity permissible, and adulthood just bearable.
The Moral of the Marmalade
Michael Bond didn’t set out to write a manifesto. He wrote about a small, decent person (yes, person) who tries, fails neatly, apologises properly, and carries spare sandwiches. That’s not just a children’s character; it’s a workable civic ideal. No wonder the country adopted him.
I suspect the lawyers at StudioCanal hadn’t reckoned with the Streisand Effect - that modern curse in which any attempt to suppress an image merely catapults it into every feed on earth. In suing Spitting Image for besmirching Paddington’s good name, they may have ensured that millions who’d never seen the drug-addled bear now can’t unsee him. It’s like trying to hush up gossip at the Reform Club by calling a press conference. The trouble with throwing marmalade at your enemies is that some of it always lands on your own duffle coat.
A royal like the Duke of Sussex may be lampooned because he is born to it; a bear may not, because he is branded to it. The crown is hereditary, the copyright contractual - and the latter comes with better lawyers.
Paddington’s Adventures 1958–2025
1958 A Bear Is Born – Collins publishes A Bear Called Paddington.
1970 From Page to Screen – FilmFair/Ivor Wood’s TV series airs on the BBC.2007 - StudioCanal Steps In – Film rights acquired; Bond retains creative veto.
2014 - Parody Law Arrives – UK introduces fair-dealing exception for parody.
2017 - Farewell Mr Bond – Michael Bond dies, aged 91.
2022 - Jubilee Tea with the Queen – Paddington shares tea and sandwiches with Queen Elizabeth II.
2025- Spitting Image Crosses the Line – A drug-addled parody bear appears on YouTube with the Spitting Image of the Duke of Sussex.
2025 - The High Court Case – StudioCanal v Avalon tests where parody meets brand theft.
About the Author
David Salariya is a Brighton-based author, illustrator, designer and publisher who has spent a lifetime surrounded by books, pencils, and one specific old bear. He founded The Salariya Book Company in 1989 and has since produced, designed, or written more books than he’s eaten marmalade sandwiches.
These days he writes about the curious mechanics of publishing, the oddities of British books, and the creatures (real or imagined) that inhabit both. When not drawing or dismantling myths, he can be found by the sea, planning his next impossible project and reminding civilisation to look after its bears.
(Yes, he still keeps a sandwich handy - just in case. at www.davidsalariya.com)