A company that makes “emotional support” plush toy sets is suing a distributor for alleged copyright infringement.

A sampling of “Emotional Support”-branded products from What Do You Meme? LLC. (photo courtesy of court documents)

Earlier this month, What Do You Meme?, a maker of party games and a variety of plush products, filed a lawsuit against Arizona-based IdeaStage Promotions (asi/229705), noting that the company offered products bearing a striking similarity to its own plushies online. Among the offending products are miniature yellow stuffed chicks arranged in a plush bowl bearing the words “Emotional Support Chickies.” In the complaint, What Do You Meme? noted that the products appeared on the distributor’s website without authorization, consent, knowledge or remuneration to them.

Jeffrey Young, CEO of IdeaStage, said his company wasn’t contacted by What Do You Meme? before the lawsuit was filed. However, IdeaStage removed the online listings mentioned in the lawsuit the day it learned of the complaint. And the supplier who was offering the infringing products “has since removed the products from its catalog data as well,” he added.

“IdeaStage did not design, manufacture or sell these products. The listings came to our website automatically through a supplier’s product data feed, as many promotional product listings do. We have no record of any sale of them,” Young said. “We respect intellectual property rights and take these issues seriously.”

What Do You Meme? has filed a number of trademark and copyright infringement lawsuits aimed at various toy manufacturers and retailers for copying its “emotional support pal” toys. This month, for example, the company also filed a suit against Zenliv Limited for allegedly copying several of its emotional support toy sets, including plush capybaras, dumplings, chicks and pickles. As of Oct. 21, Zenliv was still selling those plushies on its Amazon store, under a tab titled “emotional support plush set.”