The creators of South Park have been sued for copyright infringement in the U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania for allegedly ripping off a lollipop character in a show called The Lollipop Forest that appeared several years ago. The Lollipop Forest creator alleges that a character that appeared in three episodes of South Park known as the Lollipop King was inspired by a character named Big Bad Lollipop from his show.
Apparently, the Lollipop Forest creator didn’t appreciate that the Lollipop King “[was] choked out by a Storm Trooper … witness[ed] the carnage of a suicide bomber … and gets a front row seat as Kyle performs a sexual act of an oral nature on Cartman’s nether region.” There’s more information about the case here.
Judging by the overall look and feel of these respective characters, and the nature in which they were both used, my money is on South Park. The Lollipop Forest creators have copyrights on their characters, but they don’t own a monopoly on all lollipop characters. I’m guessing that you would be hard pressed to find a jury that would think these characters are anything alike. But even if they do, South Park is in the business of satire, and satire is one of the primary bases for fair use. If courts allowed every lampooned person or character (living, dead, or fictional) to sue every time they appeared in a cartoon or an SNL skit, we’d be in big trouble.