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Trademarks: Barbie Beats Bratz

I do like a good trademark fight. span style="font-style: italic;"The London Times Online/span reports a href="http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article5294026.ece"span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Barbie triumphs over span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"Bratz/span in court battle/span/a:br /br /div style="text-align: justify;" /divblockquotediv style="text-align: justify;""An uneasy peace returned to the dolls' house this week after a prim and proper Barbie finally repelled a four-year siege by an unruly gang of gatecrashers called span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"Yasmine/span, Chloe, Sasha and Jade.br /br /In what could be the decisive blow in a multi-billion dollar legal battle, a California judge ordered span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"MGA/span Entertainment to halt production of its span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"Bratz/span dolls after a jury decided that they infringed copyrights owned by Mattel, owner of arch-rival Barbie."br /br /***br /br //divp style="text-align: justify;" ?Mattel has established its exclusive rights to the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"Bratz/span drawings and the court has found that hundreds of the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"MGA/span products ? including all the currently available core female fashion dolls Mattel was able to locate in the marketplace ? infringe those rights,? Judge Larson said in the ruling. /pp style="text-align: justify;" He also ordered span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"MGA/span to recall all span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"Bratz/span dolls from span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"toyshops/span and distributors but gave the manufacturer a seven-week grace period, allowing them to stay on the shelves over the crucial Christmas period. /pp style="text-align: justify;" The judge also ruled out the possibility of an arrangement whereby span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"MGA/span might continue to produce span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"Bratz/span dolls but pay a royalty to Mattel for using its copyright, a common solution in similar US intellectual property disputes.br //pp style="text-align: justify;"***/pp style="text-align: justify;" In August, a court ruled that Carter Bryant, the creator of span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"Bratz/span, came up with the concept while working for Mattel, where he was a Barbie designer. /pp style="text-align: justify;" A jury subsequently ruled that Mr Bryant had secretly sold the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12"Bratz/span concept to span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13"MGA/span and the court awarded the majority of the rights to Mattel, with £100 million in damages. /p/blockquotepWhat you done to protect your intellectual property? Think about the losses to span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14"MGA/span and ask if your company could survive this kind of loss. If not, get yourself to a lawyer ASAP./p

Full post as published by Indiana Civil & Business Lawyer on December 17, 2008 (boomark / email).