Legal News

Prior to Bratz v. Barbie Litigation, Designer Scrambled Hard Drive

By Dan Slater

In the Bratz-Barbie throwdown in Riverside, defendant-MGA’s case hit a snag yesterday when it was revealed that the designer of the Bratz doll used a program called “Evidence Eliminator” to scramble his hard drive days before its data were to be copied for the lawsuit.

According to Nicholas Casey’s WSJ story, when trial resumed yesterday morning, lawyers revealed that Carter Bryant, the Bratz designer, had used the program to rename about 9,400 files.

Mattel, represented by Quinn Emanuel’s John Quinn, accuses MGA of essentially stealing the idea for Bratz dolls, and is trying to seize ownership of the Bratz line. Mattel says Bryant, the designer who sold the Bratz idea to MGA, dreamed up the doll while at Mattel. MGA says Bryant conceived Bratz between two stints at Mattel. MGA, rep’d by Skadden’s Tom Nolan, denies wrongdoing, and accuses Mattel in a separate suit of copying Bratz.

Bryant’s actions, writes the WSJ, could damage MGA’s defense, which hinges on the credibility of Bryant’s claim that he created the doll before returning to Mattel. “Who goes out and buys a program called ‘Evidence Eliminator’?” asked District Judge Stephen G. Larson, who called Bryant’s actions “really powerful impeachment evidence.” The judge ruled to allow the event to be introduced to the jury, though Mattel hadn’t done so by the end of Tuesday’s proceedings.

Lawyers for MGA said the action wasn’t meant to destroy potential evidence. Bryant, said MGA, sought to get rid of certain Internet pop-up ads, some of them of a sexually explicit nature,

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 11, 2008 (boomark / email).