Basically Mattel was trying to figure out how to shut down it's competition. A former Mattel designer sold the concept to MGA while he was still employed. Personally I think Bratz are cooler than Barbies. They are hip, Multi-ethnic and I love that they have huge heads and no "idealized" body type. I mean Barbie is like 30 years old, a blonde Cali girl with pointy boobs.
OS ANGELES (Reuters) – A federal judge in California on Wednesday ordered MGA Entertainment Inc to stop selling its popular Bratz dolls and banned it from using the Bratz name, finding that "hundreds" of Bratz products infringe on copyrights owned by rival toymaker Mattel Inc (MAT.N).
U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson also ordered MGA to recall all Bratz dolls from retailers and to destroy "specialized plates, molds and matrices" used to make the dolls, according to a permanent injunction issued late on Wednesday, but stayed until at least early next year.
The ruling appears to allow MGA and retailers to sell the Bratz dolls through the Christmas holiday season.
Larson rejected the idea of allowing MGA to continue to make the pouty lipped, urban chic dolls that made its name and fortunes while paying Mattel a royalty. Larson set a February 11 hearing on post-trial motions.
"Mattel has established its exclusive rights to the Bratz drawings and the court has found that hundreds of the MGA parties' products -- including all the currently available core female fashion dolls Mattel was able to locate in the marketplace -- infringe those rights," Larson wrote in the ruling.
Mattel won the rights to the $1 billion-plus Bratz franchise earlier this year in a lawsuit against MGA and former Mattel Barbie designer Carter Bryant, who invented the Bratz concept while under contract to Mattel.
A jury later ruled Bryant had secretly sold the concept to MGA.
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