In the Benelux H&M(clothes) and Bart Smit(toys) started selling Kathy merchandise. This, however, did not go well with Mercis, a Dick Bruna owned company that manages all intellectual property rights concerning Nijntje, the world famous bunny.
The court eventually decided that even though Nijntje is a very stylized bunny, she is most certainly an artistic creation, and therefore protected by copyright. Nijntje, like Kathy, is characterized by the thick lines and elementary colors. The proportion of the head in relation to the hands and body is almost identical. The court judged that it is clear that Kathy had been copied off Nijntje, the only real difference between them being the mouth and shape of the ears.