Week 8 EOC: Bratz vs. Mattel

"The case is Mattel Inc. v. MGA Entertainment Inc., 11-56357, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (San Francisco)." (bloomberg.com) the case of Mattel vs. Bratz is quite confusing. The rulings have been in both plaintiffs’ favors yet when one loses they take the other back to court for a retrial. The fact is both MGA and Mattel have claims of trademark theft yet Mattel’s runs years old where MGA has more recent theft. Whether or not the statute of limitations has been reached i think the battle is getting rather old.

To claim that just because the founder of MGA was a worker for Mattel and that because he worked for Mattel that the exaggerated features of the "Bratz" doll is stolen from Barbie, which was the first exaggerated doll, is a petty claim. Yet it has been held up in courts and the process just keeps going on and on.

To have a doll that has exaggerated features does not mean that it is the same doll as Barbie. Bratz dolls are a different height and have extremely different facial expressions along with different sized heads and arms. Also stylistically Bratz dolls have more of risky /club apparel where Barbie has more of a classic style.

Also the fact that the court of appeals said that MGA's most recent claim of theft should have not been allowed to go to trial seems biased on the court of appeals end.Not only did they contradict themselves and awarded the plantiff the 172.5 million that the jury awarded in the beginning, they said that MGA had a perfectly reasonable case for trademark infringement.

years before they ruled in Mattel's favor giving almost all of Bratz doll's rights to Mattel, Then a retrial happened and the ruling was reversed. I just hope that they will actually come to a final conclusion in this case and both the companies will stop stealing out of each other's pockets and realize that they both have great idea's for dolls, and let alone those dolls have earned them each a pretty penny.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-24/mga-bratz-win-over-mattel-partly-erased-by-appeals-court.html