I wrote about this lawsuit yesterday, based on a stupidly short article in The Daily Beast, and I can see that I lacked a clear picture of what the new movie was. The "restricted" trailer gives plenty of information about the kind of satire that's going on (and please know in advance there's lots of puppet ejaculation at the very end):



For what it's worth: When I tried to type the first tag for this post, which was going to be "sesame street," I typed "sexame." That does suggest the new movie has the power to sully the brand, which may support the "Sesame Street" — jeez! I did it again! — side of the legal argument, which is based on trademark and therefore confusion, but I think that satirizing TV shows is an important part of the free-speech tradition. You have to be able to parody famous characters, and in fact there's a Muppet tradition:

The Land of Gorch was a recurring skit that appeared in season one of the American comedy television program Saturday Night Live, featuring Jim Henson's Muppets. Prior to his work for children on Sesame Street, Henson had created puppetry work, including his show Sam and Friends, for adult audiences. His characters appeared regularly on the late-night comedy television programs, and The Ed Sullivan Show. After Sesame Street, Henson feared he would become typecast into working on children's television series. His talent agent Bernie Brillstein, who represented Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi, helped him transition to Saturday Night Live....

The premise of The Land of Gorch featured Muppet characters, who were members of a royal family, in a faraway locale. They behaved boorishly and made frequent references to drug abuse, sexual innuendo, and consumption of alcohol. Characters included King Ploobis, Queen Peuta, their son, and servants Scred and Vazh. These characters often consulted their oracle Mighty Favog for advice....

Neither "The Land of Gorch" nor "The Happytime Murders" uses a particular puppet that was or is on "Sesame Street" (as far as I know). The idea was that there was a style of puppetmaking that had been established and was developed for the children's show in the 1960s, but that was always in tension with the broader idea of what to do with Muppets.

Notice that "Sesame Street" isn't claiming control over the Muppets brand. The movie is co-produced by the Jim Henson Co., and the director is Brian Henson who directed “The Muppets Christmas Carol” (WaPo). The claim seems to need to rely of confusion with the "Sesame Street" subsection of the larger Muppet project. The tag line for "The Happytime Murders" is "No Sesame. All Street."

Is that confusing, saying that it's not Sesame? That's what the lawsuit says. I've got to dredge up my "lawsuits I hope will fail" tag.