Vanya25@Vanya25_N
🚨 Andrea VS Sprout: Who was Supercell sued by and when? 📋
Although many of the recent discussions online have been mentioning that Supercell was sued by a French company that owns the Andrea Air Purifier, this statement is incorrect. In actuality, Supercell was sued by one person – Mathieu Lehanneur, and this conflict has been brewing for nearly 6 years.
Mathieu Lehanneur is a French designer, best known for combining design, science, technology, and nature in his projects. Rather than focusing on traditional furniture or decorative objects, he often creates designs that solve practical problems or explore how people interact with their environment.
Together with David Edwards (an American biomedical engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and former professor at Harvard University), Lehanneur developed the Andrea Air Purifier, which was the subject of a U.S. patent application filed on October 8th, 2008, and was later marketed in 2009.
On June 29th, 2020 (just 2.5 months after Sprout's release in Brawl Stars), Lehanneur sent Supercell a formal notice alleging infringement and demanding that Supercell cease using the design. Then, on October 27th, 2021, he sent a second formal notice, this time specifically invoking his rights under French copyright law.
Supercell then rejected those claims on November 8th, 2021, on the grounds that the air purifier was not an original copyrighted work and that Brawl Stars' character Sprout did not infringe it. However, that didn't stop the French designer.
On December 10th, 2021, Mathieu Lehanneur had a report drawn up on the Internet, and subsequently sued Supercell for copyright infringement. The lawsuit was formally initiated on December 17th, 2021, and later proceeded through the French court system under case number RG 22/01196.
One of Supercell's arguments during the legal dispute was that Andrea had been developed with the involvement of David Edwards, so Lehanneur might not be the only holder of the rights. The court examined that issue in detail, and according to the judgment, Edwards stated that his contribution was limited to the technical and scientific aspects of the project and that he did not claim any copyright in the artistic design of Andrea. The court therefore recognized Lehanneur as the sole author of the protected design for the purposes of the case and held that he could sue alone.
After nearly 4 years of court proceedings, the judgment was issued on December 4th, 2025, by the Paris Judicial Court, finding that Sprout's design has infringed the copyright of the Andrea Air Purifier.
The court ordered Supercell to pay damages, disclose certain financial information related to Sprout's exploitation in France, and cease using the infringing design in France. While the court rejected Lehanneur's separate claim of parasitism, it ruled in his favor on the central copyright infringement claim.
