During Fall Out Boy's MANIA era, the band had a lot of fun with its llama-themed costumes. They've been plastered all over the band's T-shirts, tour posters, music videos, social media pages, an iPhone app and even their own musical album.
Now, however, a Brooklyn-based puppet maker is claiming that Fall Out Boy has stolen its llama costume and is now using it as their own, charging them with copyright infringement and breach of contract. Furry Puppet Studio, which created two wearable llama puppets for the band's 2017 video "Young and Menace," says they've since become central to the group's identity, brand and music.
FPS claims that they've had to use a lot of clairvoyance to anticipate how the llamas would be used because their widespread uses are far beyond what the company originally had in mind for them. These include merchandise, GIFs, television appearances, emojis and other uses that are so far beyond the scope of the original project that it required omniscient clairvoyance from the company to have foreseen them all.
The complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court on Monday, claims that Fall Out Boy and other defendants, including Universal Music Group Inc. and Sony Music Entertainment, are infringing the studio's rights.
The puppets were created exclusively for the "Young and Menace" music video, and they were only licensed for that purpose. The suit accuses the band of taking those limited licenses and using them for other purposes, including on their tour, in merchandise, in GIFs and on TV. The llama costumes have been viewed more than 1 billion times, the lawsuit alleges.