Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-18-55635/USCOURTS-ca9-18-55635-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Denise Daniels
Appellant
Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media Inc.
Appellee
Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Appellee
Disney Interactive Studios, Inc.
Appellee
Disney Shopping, Inc.
Appellee
Pixar
Appellee
The Moodsters Company
Appellant
The Walt Disney Company
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

DENISE DANIELS; THE MOODSTERS 

COMPANY,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY; DISNEY 

ENTERPRISES, INC.; DISNEY 

CONSUMER PRODUCTS AND 

INTERACTIVE MEDIA INC.; DISNEY 

INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.; DISNEY 

SHOPPING, INC.; PIXAR,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 18-55635

D.C. No.

2:17-cv-04527-

PSG-SK 

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Philip S. Gutierrez, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted November 6, 2019

Pasadena, California

Filed March 16, 2020

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2 DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO.

Before: Jerome Farris, M. Margaret McKeown, and 

Barrington D. Parker, Jr.,* Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge McKeown

SUMMARY**

Copyright

The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal of an 

action alleging copyright infringement by the Disney movie 

Inside Out of plaintiffs’ characters called The Moodsters.

Affirming the denial of plaintiff’s claim under the 

Copyright Act, the panel held that The Moodsters, lightly 

sketched anthropomorphized characters representing human 

emotions, did not qualify for copyright protection because 

they lacked consistent, identifiable character traits and 

attributes and were not especially distinctive. The 

Moodsters also did not qualify for copyright protection 

under the alternative “story being told” test.

The panel also affirmed the district court’s denial of 

plaintiff’s claim for breach of an implied-in-fact contract 

under California law, based on her disclosure of information 

* The Honorable Barrington D. Parker, Jr., United States Circuit 

Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, sitting by 

designation.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It 

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO. 3

about The Moodsters to various employees of Disney and its 

affiliates.

COUNSEL

Patrick Arenz, Esq.(argued), Ronald J. Schutz and Brenda L. 

Joly, Robins Kaplan LLP, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for 

Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Mark Remy Yohalem, Esq. (argued), Glenn D. Pomerantz, 

Erin J. Cox, Kenneth M. Trujillo-Jamison, and Anne K. 

Conley, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, Los Angeles, 

California, for Defendants-Appellees.

OPINION

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:

Literary and graphic characters—from James Bond to 

the Batmobile—capture our creative imagination. These 

characters also may enjoy copyright protection, subject to 

certain limitations. Here we consider whether certain 

anthropomorphized characters representing human emotions 

qualify for copyright protection. They do not. For guidance, 

we turn to DC Comics v. Towle, our court’s most recent 

explanation of the copyrightability of graphically-depicted 

characters. DC Comics v. Towle, 802 F.3d 1012 (9th Cir. 

2015). 

Denise Daniels developed a line of anthropomorphic 

characters called The Moodsters, which she pitched to 

entertainment and toy companies around the country, 

including The Walt Disney Company. Under Towle, “lightly 

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4 DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO.

sketched” characters such as The Moodsters, which lack 

“consistent, identifiable character traits and attributes,” do 

not enjoy copyright protection. Id. at 1019, 1021. We affirm 

the district court’s dismissal of Daniels’s complaint.

BACKGROUND

I. The Moodsters

Daniels is an expert on children’s emotional intelligence 

and development. She designed and promoted initiatives 

that help children cope with strong emotions like loss and 

trauma. The Moodsters were devised as a commercial 

application of this work. Daniels hired a team to produce 

and develop her idea under the umbrella of her new 

company, The Moodsters Company. The initial product was 

The Moodsters Bible (“Bible”), a pitchbook released in 

2005. It provided a concise way to convey Daniels’s idea to 

media executives and other potential collaborators, and 

included a brief description of the characters, themes, and 

setting that Daniels envisioned for her Moodsters universe. 

The Moodsters are five characters that are color-coded 

anthropomorphic emotions, each representing a different 

emotion: pink (love); yellow (happiness); blue (sadness); red 

(anger); and green (fear). Daniels initially named The 

Moodsters Oolvia, Zip, Sniff, Roary, and Shake, although 

these names changed in each iteration of the characters. 

In 2007, Daniels and her team released a 30-minute pilot 

episode for a television series featuring The Moodsters, 

titled “The Amoodsment Mixup” (“pilot”). The pilot was 

later available on YouTube. 

Between 2012 and 2013, Daniels and her team 

developed what they call the “second generation” of 

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DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO. 5

Moodsters products: a line of toys and books featuring The 

Moodsters that were sold at Target and other retailers 

beginning in 2015. 

Daniels and The Moodsters Company pitched The 

Moodsters to numerous media and entertainment companies. 

One recurring target was The Walt Disney Company and its 

affiliates, including Pixar. Daniels alleges that she or a 

member of her team had contact with several different 

Disney employees between 2005 and 2009. 

The claimed contact began in 2005, when a member of 

The Moodsters Company shared information about The 

Moodsters with an employee of Playhouse Disney. Daniels 

alleges that in 2008 she was put in touch with Thomas 

Staggs, the Chief Financial Officer of the Walt Disney 

Company, and that Staggs later informed her that he would 

share materials about The Moodsters with Roy E. Disney, 

the son of a Disney founder, and Rich Ross, the President of 

Disney Channels Worldwide. Finally, Daniels alleges that 

she spoke by phone with Pete Docter, a director and 

screenwriter, and they discussed The Moodsters, although 

no year or context for this conversation is alleged in the 

Complaint. 

II. Disney’s Inside Out

Disney began development of its movie Inside Out in 

2010. The movie was released in 2015, and centers on five 

anthropomorphized emotions that live inside the mind of an 

11-year-old girl named Riley. Those emotions are joy, fear, 

sadness, disgust, and anger. Docter, who directed and cowrote the screenplay, stated that his inspiration for the film 

was the manner with which his 11-year-old daughter dealt 

with new emotions as she matured.

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6 DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO.

III.District Court Proceedings

Daniels filed suit against Disney in 2017 for breach of an 

implied-in-fact contract, arising from Disney’s failure to 

compensate Daniels for the allegedly disclosed material used 

to develop Inside Out. Daniels then filed an amended 

complaint, joining The Moodsters Company as a co-plaintiff 

and alleging copyright infringement of both the individual 

Moodsters characters and the ensemble of characters as a 

whole.

Disney filed a motion to dismiss, asserting that Daniels 

failed to meet the legal standard for copyright in a character, 

and that the copyright “publication” of the Bible and pilot 

doomed Daniels’s implied-in-fact contract claim. The 

district court granted Disney’s motion to dismiss, and 

granted Daniels leave to file an amended complaint on the 

copyright claims. Disney filed a motion to dismiss the 

Amended Complaint, which the district court granted on the 

ground that The Moodsters are not protectable by copyright. 

ANALYSIS

I. Copyright Protection for The Moodsters

Although characters are not an enumerated 

copyrightable subject matter under the Copyright Act, see 17 

U.S.C. § 102(a), there is a long history of extending 

copyright protection to graphically-depicted characters. See, 

e.g., Olson v. Nat’l Broad. Co., 855 F.2d 1446, 1452 (9th 

Cir. 1988); Walt Disney Prods. v. Air Pirates, 581 F.2d 751, 

755 (9th Cir. 1978). However, “[n]ot every comic book, 

television, or motion picture character is entitled to 

copyright protection.” Towle, 802 F.3d at 1019. A character 

is entitled to copyright protection if (1) the character has 

“physical as well as conceptual qualities,” (2) the character 

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DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO. 7

is “sufficiently delineated to be recognizable as the same 

character whenever it appears” and “display[s] consistent, 

identifiable character traits and attributes,” and (3) the 

character is “especially distinctive” and “contain[s] some 

unique elements of expression.” Id. at 1021 (internal 

citations and quotation marks removed).

A. Application of the Towle Test to The Moodsters

Disney does not dispute that the individual Moodster 

characters meet the first prong of the Towle test: each has 

physical as well as conceptual qualities. Because they have

physical qualities, The Moodsters are not mere literary 

characters. 

The second prong presents an insurmountable hurdle for 

Daniels. Towle requires that a character must be 

“sufficiently delineated to be recognizable as the same 

character whenever it appears.” Id. Although a character 

that has appeared in multiple productions or iterations “need 

not have a consistent appearance,” it “must display 

consistent, identifiable character traits and attributes” such 

that it is recognizable whenever it appears. Id. 

Consistently recognizable characters like Godzilla or 

James Bond, whose physical characteristics may change 

over various iterations, but who maintain consistent and 

identifiable character traits and attributes across various 

productions and adaptations, meet the test. See Tono Co. v. 

William Morrow & Co., 33 F. Supp. 2d 1206, 1215 (C.D. 

Cal. 1998) (finding that Godzilla is consistently a “prehistoric, fire-breathing, gigantic dinosaur alive and well in 

the modern world”), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. v. Am. 

Honda Motor Corp., 900 F. Supp. 1287, 1296 (C.D. Cal. 

1995) (noting that James Bond has consistent traits such as 

“his cold-bloodedness; his overt sexuality; his love of 

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8 DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO.

martinis ‘shaken, not stirred;’ his marksmanship; his ‘license 

to kill’ and use of guns; his physical strength; his 

sophistication”). By contrast, a character that lacks a core 

set of consistent and identifiable character traits and 

attributes is not protectable, because that character is not 

immediately recognizable as the same character whenever it 

appears. See, e.g., Olson, 855 F.2d at 1452–53 (holding that 

television characters from “Cargo” are too “lightly 

sketched” to be independently protectable by copyright).

In addressing The Moodsters, we first distinguish 

between the idea for a character and the depiction of that 

character. The notion of using a color to represent a mood 

or emotion is an idea that does not fall within the protection 

of copyright. See 17 U.S.C. § 102(b) (“In no case does 

copyright protection for an original work of authorship 

extend to any idea . . . regardless of the form in which it is 

described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such 

work.”); see also Feist Publ’ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 

499 U.S. 340, 344–45 (1991) (internal quotation marks and 

citation removed) (“The most fundamental axiom of 

copyright law is that no author may copyright his ideas ....”);

Frybarger v. Int’l Bus. Mach. Corp., 812 F.2d 525, 529 (9th 

Cir. 1987) (“[I]deas themselves are not protected by 

copyright and cannot, therefore, be infringed.”). So it is no 

surprise that the idea of color psychology is involved in 

everything from decorating books to marketing and color 

therapy. Color and emotion are also frequent themes in 

children’s books, such as Dr. Seuss’s classic, My Many 

Colored Days, and Anna Llenas’s The Color Monster: A 

Story of Emotions.

Notably, colors themselves are not generally 

copyrightable. Boisson v. Banian, 273 F.3d 262, 271 (2d 

Cir. 2001) (“Color by itself is not subject to copyright 

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DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO. 9

protection.”); see also 38 C.F.R. § 202.1(a) (“[M]ere 

variations of . . . coloring” are not copyrightable). Nor is the 

“idea” of an emotion copyrightable. See Feist, 499 U.S. at 

350. Taken together, these principles mean that Daniels 

cannot copyright the idea of colors or emotions, nor can she 

copyright the idea of using colors to represent emotions 

where these ideas are embodied in a character without 

sufficient delineation and distinctiveness. 

In analyzing whether The Moodster characters are 

“sufficiently delineated,” we carefully examine the graphic 

depiction of the characters and not the ideas underlying 

them. We look first to the physical appearance of The 

Moodsters. Unlike, for example, the Batmobile, which 

“maintained distinct physical and conceptual qualities since 

its first appearance in the comic books,” the physical 

appearance of The Moodsters changed significantly over 

time. Towle, 802 F.3d at 1021. In the 2005 Bible and 2007 

television pilot, the five Moodsters have an insect-like 

appearance, with skinny bodies, long ears, and tall antennas 

that act as “emotional barometers” to form a distinctive 

shape and glow when an emotion is strongly felt. By the 

second generation of toys, The Moodsters look like small, 

loveable bears.1

 They are round and cuddly, have small ears, 

and each dons a detective’s hat and small cape. This 

physical transformation over time was not insubstantial, and 

it would be difficult to conclude that the 2005 Moodsters are 

the same characters as those sold at Target in 2015.

1 Although the second generation of toys was developed between 

2012 and 2013—after Disney began to develop Inside Out in 2010—that 

iteration remains relevant because the Towle test asks whether a 

character has displayed “consistent, identifiable character traits and 

attributes” whenever it appears. 802 F.3d at 1021.

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10 DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO.

Mindful that physical appearance alone is not decisive, 

we also consider whether The Moodsters have maintained 

consistent character traits and attributes. Across the various 

iterations The Moodsters have consistently represented five 

human emotions, and those emotions have not changed. But 

other than the idea of color and emotions, there are few other 

identifiable character traits and attributes that are consistent 

over the various iterations. In the 2005 Bible, each character 

is described in a few short paragraphs. For example, the Zip 

character is described as having “an infectious laugh and 

wakes up each morning with a smile on his face and a 

friendly attitude.” By the 2007 pilot and the second 

generation of toys, these characteristics are not mentioned 

and are not evident from the depiction of Zip. “Lightly 

sketched” characters of this kind, without identifiable 

character traits, are not copyrightable under the second 

prong of Towle. See id. at 1019 (citing Olson, 855 F.3d at 

1452–53). 

Perhaps the most readily identifiable attribute of The 

Moodsters is their relationship to emotions. The 2005 Bible 

explains that each character relates to emotions in its own 

way when something new happens—the “anger” Moodster 

might become angry, whereas the “sad” Moodster might 

become sad. The Moodsters behave in a similar fashion in 

the 2007 pilot, where each character is especially prone to a 

particular emotion such as anger or sadness. But by 2015, 

the five Moodsters are “mood detectives,” and help a young 

boy uncover how he feels about situations in his life.

Finally, in every iteration the five Moodsters each have 

a completely different name. For example, the red/anger 

Moodster was originally named Roary in the 2005 Bible, 

then Rizzi in the 2007 pilot, and as of 2015 was named Razzy 

in Moodsters toys and the Meet the Moodsters storybook. 

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DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO. 11

The other four characters have gone through similar name 

changes over the three iterations. While a change of name is 

not dispositive in our analysis, these changes across the three 

iterations further illustrate that Daniels never settled on a 

well-delineated set of characters beyond their representation 

of five human emotions. 

The Batmobile in Towle again provides a useful contrast 

to this case. There, we recognized that from the time of the 

1966 television series to the 1989 motion picture, the 

Batmobile had numerous identifiable and consistent 

character traits and attributes. It was always a “crimefighting car” that allowed Batman to defeat his enemies. 

Towle, 802 F.3d at 1021. It consistently had jet-engines and 

far more power than an ordinary car, the most up-to-date 

weaponry, and the ability to navigate through landscapes 

impassible for an ordinary vehicle. Id. at 1021–22. Beyond 

the emotion it represents, each Moodster lacks comparable 

identifiable and consistent character traits and attributes 

across iterations, thus failing the second prong of the Towle

test. 

Finally, even giving Daniels the benefit of the doubt on 

Towle’s second prong, we conclude that The Moodsters fail 

the third prong—they are not “especially distinctive” and do 

not “contain some unique elements of expression.” Id.

(internal quotation marks and citations removed). Daniels 

identifies The Moodsters as unique in that they each 

represent a single emotion. But this facet is not sufficient to 

render them “especially distinctive,” particularly given their 

otherwise generic attributes and character traits. In contrast, 

the Batmobile in Towle had a “unique and highly 

recognizable name,” unlike each Moodster, which had three 

entirely different names. Id. at 1022. Developing a 

character as an anthropomorphized version of a specific 

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12 DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO.

emotion is not sufficient, in itself, to establish a 

copyrightable character. See Rice v. Fox Broad. Co., 330 

F.3d 1170, 1175 (9th Cir. 2003) (declining to extend 

copyright protection to “the magician ... dressed in standard 

magician garb—black tuxedo with tails, a while tuxedo shirt, 

a black bow tie, and a black cape with red lining” whose role 

is “limited to performing and revealing magic tricks”). 

Taken together, The Moodsters are not “especially 

distinctive,” and do not meet the third prong of the Towle

test.

B. The Story Being Told Test

Since the 1950s, we have also extended copyright 

protection to characters—both literary and graphic—that 

constitute “the story being told” in a work. Warner Bros. 

Pictures v. Columbia Broad. Sys., 216 F.2d 945, 950 (9th 

Cir. 1954); see also Rice, 330 F.3d at 1175–76; Halicki 

Films, LLC v. Sanderson Sales & Mktg., 547 F.3d 1213, 

1224 (9th Cir. 2008). A character is not copyrightable under 

this test where “the character is only the chessman in the 

game of telling the story.” Warner Bros. Pictures, 216 F.2d 

at 950. This is a high bar, since few characters so dominate 

the story such that it becomes essentially a character study.

Warner Brothers and Towle are two different tests for 

character copyrightability. See Rice, 330 F.3d at 1175 

(“characters that are ‘especially distinctive’ or the ‘story 

being told’ receive protection apart from the copyrighted 

work” (emphasis added)). Thus, we do not embrace the 

district court’s view that Towle represents the exclusive test 

for copyrightability. 

The Warner Brothers test is therefore available, but it 

affords no protection to The Moodsters. Neither the Bible 

nor the pilot episode exhibits any prolonged engagement 

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DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO. 13

with character development or a character study of The 

Moodsters. Although the characters are introduced in the 

Bible, along with short descriptions, these pithy descriptions 

do not constitute the story being told. The pilot contains 

even less character development—rather, each of The 

Moodsters serves primarily as a means by which particular 

emotions are introduced and explored. The Moodsters are 

mere chessmen in the game of telling the story.

Daniels’s final argument is that even if the individual 

Moodsters are not protectable under the Towle or “story 

being told” regimes, the ensemble of five characters together

meets one or both of those tests. Daniels’s ensemble claim 

does not change the distinctiveness or degree of delineation 

of the characters, and so The Moodsters as an ensemble are 

no more copyrightable than the individual characters. 

The district court did not err in dismissing Daniels’s 

claims for copyright infringement.

II. Implied-in-Fact Contract

Daniels also puts forth a claim for breach of an impliedin-fact contract. Under California law, a plaintiff can 

recover compensation for an idea conveyed to a counterparty where no explicit contract exists only where (1) 

“before or after disclosure he has obtained an express 

promise to pay,” or (2) “the circumstances preceding and 

attending disclosure, together with the conduct of the offeree 

acting with knowledge of the circumstances, show a promise 

of the type usually referred to as ‘implied’ or ‘implied-infact.’” Desny v. Wilder, 46 Cal. 2d 715, 738 (1956). The 

Ninth Circuit has developed a multi-part test to evaluate 

Desny claims, asking whether (1) the plaintiff prepared or 

created the work in question, (2) the work was disclosed to 

the defendant for sale, and (3) the disclosure was made

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14 DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO.

“under circumstances from which it could be concluded that 

the offeree voluntarily accepted the disclosure knowing the 

conditions on which it was tendered and the reasonable value 

of the work.” Grosso v. Miramax Film Corp., 383 F.3d 965, 

967 (9th Cir. 2004).

Daniels’s implied-in-fact contract claim is based on the 

disclosure of information about The Moodsters to various 

employees of Disney and its affiliates between 2005 and 

2009. These discussions were a part of Daniels’s effort to 

find a partner with whom she could develop and grow the 

Moodsters brand and commercial opportunities. 

There is no dispute that Daniels created the characters in 

question, and we accept as true that the alleged conversations 

took place. But the existence of a conversation in which an 

idea is disclosed is, by itself, an insufficient basis to support 

an implied-in-fact contract. 

Daniels alleges that “she was aware and relied on 

customs and practices in the entertainment industry when 

she approached Disney˖Pixar about a partnership,” and that 

“Disney˖Pixar accepted the disclosure of the ideas in The 

Moodsters with an expectation that it would have to 

compensate Daniels and The Moodsters Company if 

Disney˖Pixar used this idea in any television, motion picture, 

merchandise, or otherwise.” 

But we are told no more. Daniels offers only bare 

allegations, stripped of relevant details that might support 

her claim for an implied-in-fact contract. No dates are 

alleged, and no details are provided. There is no basis to 

conclude that Disney either provided an express offer to pay 

for the disclosure of Daniels’s idea or that the disclosure was 

made “under circumstances from which it could be 

concluded that [Disney] voluntarily accepted the disclosure 

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DANIELS V. THE WALT DISNEY CO. 15

knowing the conditions on which it was tendered and the 

reasonable value of the work.” Id. 

To survive a motion to dismiss, Daniels is required under 

California law to do more than plead a boiler-plate 

allegation, devoid of any relevant details. The district court 

did not err in dismissing Daniels’s claim for an implied-infact contract. 

CONCLUSION

There is no dispute that the 2005 Moodsters Bible and 

the 2007 pilot television episode are protected by copyright. 

But Daniels cannot succeed on her copyright claim for The 

Moodsters characters, which are “lightly sketched” and 

neither sufficiently delineated nor representative of the story 

being told. Daniels also fails to allege sufficient facts to 

maintain an implied-in-fact contract claim against Disney 

under California law. 

AFFIRMED.

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