Legal News

A Ruling to Give Cloe, Yasmin, Sasha and Jade Something to Pout Over

By Ashby Jones

Wow. We thought things were bad for MGA Entertainment back in July, when a Riverside, Calif., jury ordered it to pay Mattel up to $100 million as compensation for misappropriating the intellectual property behind MGA’s popular pouty-lipped Bratz dolls. Well, yesterday, things just got a whole lot worse for MGA.

The judge on the case, Stephen G. Larson, added a little salt to MGA’s wound, ruling that MGA would be “permanently enjoined” from making, producing or licensing the dolls. The judge further ordered MGA to transfer all dolls and associated products to a location of Mattel’s choosing. The judge’s ruling covered a broad range of dolls linked to designs claimed by Mattel including the Bratz line’s main characters: Cloe, Yasmin, Sasha and Jade. (Quick refresher: Mattel alleged that Carter Bryant, the designer who sold the Bratz idea to MGA, dreamed up the doll while still under contract with Mattel.) Click here for the story, from the WSJ’s Nicholas Casey; click here, here and here for earlier LB coverage.

MGA Chief Executive Isaac Larian said in an email that he hadn’t yet read the judge’s order in detail but said, “we will for sure appeal.” Skadden Arps’s Thomas Nolan, an attorney for MGA added that the judge had stayed the order from going into effect until MGA could argue for the judge to set aside the jury’s verdict altogether, an argument that will be made next February. Should this approach not succeed, Nolan said MGA would take the verdict to the 9th Circuit.

In a statement, Mattel said: “Today’s ruling underscores what Mattel has said all along — that MGA should not be allowed to profit from its wrongdoing.”

Throughout the case, Mattell has been repped by Quinn Emanuel’s John Quinn, who seems to have recently put some of his hard-earned draw into some funky new eyewear.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 04, 2008 (boomark / email).