War of Dolls – Court decision on damages from MGA to Mattel

Brandora Staff - August, 28th 2008

A Californian jury awarded Mattel Inc. multi-million dollar damages in the war of dolls

In course of the grim fight over the Bratz dolls a jury now decided in favour of the Barbie manufacturer. According to Mattel, their rival MGA Entertainment now has to pay US $ 100 million in damages. However, MGA talks about “only” $ 20 million, as they consider Mattel’s claims to be overlapping and duplicative, e.g. they sued MGA Entertainment and Larian for the same contract-related damages. Anyway, the award falls far short of the $ 1.8 billion in compensation Mattel originally sought for.

Bratz from MGA

My Scene from Mattel

Mattel Inc. took MGA to court, because they suspected Bratz designer Carter Bryant of having drawn first sketches of the famous Barbie adversaries while he was still under contract with Mattel. MGA launched their first Bratz dolls in 2001 to the US market – Bryant had been working for Mattel until 1999. Bratz dolls soon became bestselling fashion dolls and fierce competition for the established but slightly outdated Barbie collection. Mattel already settled their lawsuit against their ex-employee out of court this May, but both parties did not disclose any details.

In July the jury found that the concept of Bratz had indeed been conceived at a time when Bryant had still been working under an exclusivity deal at Mattel Company. The important question, whether or not MGA Entertainment will still be allowed to produce and market their successful Bratz line in the future will be determined at a later date. Robert A. Eckert, chairman and CEO of Mattel insists on his company’s rightful ownership of the Bratz brand. A blanket ban from marketing any Bratz related products would be fatal for MGA, as the toy manufacturer has not much to offer besides their popular fashion dolls. In Germany, MGA is primarily known as major shareholder of loss-making dolls manufacturer Zapf Creation.

Isaac Larian, CEO, MGA Entertainment intends to appeal any amount of awarded damages at the end of the case. MGA accused Mattel in turn of having copied their Bratz concept for their "My Scene" collection. So an end to Bratz war is nowhere in sight!