Earthquake ends copyright fight

In November 2010 a Dutch court found that Sanrio, the Japanese creator of Hello Kitty was infringing the intellectual property rights of Dick Bruna, a Dutch artist, who created Miffy.
 

Characters
Miffy(known as Nijntje in Dutch) is a small white female rabbit who first appeared in a children's picture book in 1955. She is drawn with only a few lines and one or two primary colours.
The Japanese rabbit 'Cathy' is one of the friends of Hello Kitty. She first appeared in 1976 and is drawn with the same simple lines, wears an almost identical dress and has very similar ears. The main difference is that Cathy wears a bow.

Court ruling
The Dutch court ordered Sanrio to stop to any production, sale and marketing of Cathy character goods in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg; and to pay €25,000/day in case of non-compliance.
Sanrio appealed the decision.

Settlement
But this month the two parties announced that they have reached a worldwide settlement ending all legal disputes and Sanrio promised to no longer use the Cathy character.
Furthermore both parties will donate € 150,000 to the victims of the earthquake of 11 March 2011 in Japan, rather than spend money on legal fees.
 
Source: IPKAT, Yahoo and Dutch news, June 2011