Vladimir Entin, director of the Intellectual Property Protection Center, said the Bulgarian company bought the copyright to use the image of Cheburashka, a small, hairy, animated creature with big round ears created by children's author Eduard Uspensky, on its toothpaste.
"Uspensky registered his cartoon character as a schematic black-and-white trademark, while a Bulgarian artist designed it in color in a way strongly resembling the cartoon by the Russian animation artist Leonid Shvartsman," Entin said.
The Bulgarian artist maintains he was only guided by the book and by Cheburashka's literary image, not by the cartoon.
Shvartsman is seeking 4.2 million ruble ($160,000) in damages for the illegal use of the image.
While Uspensky calls himself the "father of Cheburashka" and owns the character's merchandising rights in Russia, it was actually Shvartsman who created the iconic image that went on to become popular around the world.
Cheburashka first appeared in "Crocodile Gena and His Friends," a 1966 book by Uspensky.
The Cheburashka cartoons were produced by the Soyuzmultfilm animation studio from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.
