you think you have rights? Those disappeared years ago.

Since when does Barbie control the market for plastic dolls?

That does not matter. What matters is that people do not speak up and challenge all the graft and criminality in Washington, so the beast just keeps growing and growing and metastasizing.

Will it ever end? When average people demand that their legislators begin to force fairness in the court system, get rid of the lobbying by big corporations, get rid of the corruption and evil infesting our formerly great nation.

In other words, it will never happen.

...Baby Bratz Doll when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!

The language about impounding and destroying the dolls is a common request in the legal filings in these types of matters. The liklihood of this actually happening is almost zero. In reality, MGA will just cough up more money to make all of it go away. And everyone will live happily ever after.

Although not for particularly "girly" reasons. What this is really about isn't Mattel's ownership of all Barbie-like dolls, it's the question of under what circumstances a corporation can own an employee's idea. This shows just how significant that issue really is, even though it's something people rarely think about. Imagine if Jo Rowling had been employed as a computer programmer when she came up with Harry Potter, writing notes on a pad at her desk while she wrote code to pay the bills. Ethically speaking, should an employer in that circumstance, faced with an employee with a blockbuster creative work, be allowed to claim it owns the work in question?

I'd like to think this was black and white, but it's murky and probably just going to get murkier as we become more of an idea economy. This guy was getting paid to have ideas for Mattel. They presumably gave him good money for that. When he had a particularly good idea, instead of turning it over to Mattel, he kept it and made lots of money for himself, and not for the employer who'd been paying him for what was basically an option on his future ideas. That could hardly be said to be a good faith transaction on his part.

I'm really curious to see where this ends up.

If the court agrees with Mattel that the dolls are infringing, impounding and destroying them is pretty much the only sensible thing Mattel can ask for.

Think about it in a more normal copyright case. Say Disney sues someone for selling bootleg copies of their latest film. What does Disney ask for as relief?

First, Disney wants them to stop selling them. Well and good. But then what happens to the copies in the counterfeiter's warehouse?

Disney doesn't want them; it isn't going to sell them at Disney Stores, since they may be poor quality copies. But letting the counterfeiter keep them doesn't make sense, either; it would be an invitation for them to "walk out the back door" of the warehouse. The only legal thing the counterfeiter could do with the copies, since they can't distribute, sell, or play them, would be to destroy them themselves--so why not have the court make sure it gets done?

In this case, what Mattel wants are the Bratz off the market, so they can't compete with Mattel's brand. If the court rules Mattel can block the sale of the dolls, the situation is pretty much the same.

Mattel is an evil beast. Quite a while ago they destroyed a magazine for doll collectors, by claiming that the magazine couldn't talk about Barbies because the name was trademarked. Not too surprised to hear they won this one, but it's horrible.

Whatever you may think of Bratz, their existence has forced Barbie to make better dolls. Pre-Bratz Barbies were unbelievably cheap and poorly designed. 1980's Barbie's "furniture" was usually a pink plastic hollow shell modeled to look like something no one had ever seen on earth, when it wasn't just a piece of printed cardboard. The clothes were pieces of garbage. Modern Barbie furniture is actually kind of groovy and some of the clothes resemble things people actually wear. Competition is good.

This isn't just about dolls... it's about capitalism. If you believe in a free marketplace, you don't want a shoddy operation putting all competitors out of business just because it has enough seniority that it can afford to pay better lawyers.

I have no idea what the actual law or precedent is on this, but the logical conclusion is that if you're being paid to do X -- make up comic book characters, code software, designs dolls -- your employer owns your creative output in that field for the duration of your employment. If JK Rowling was debugging Excel when she came up with Harry Potter, microsoft would no more own Harry than they would own the Bob Ross paintings she liked to do on Sundays. And, of course, an employee is always free to demand certain creative rights during contract negotiations (which I would presume happens with valuable creative personnel hired for specific projects).

IMO if you're employed by Mattel designing Barbies, you come up with a similar doll with more appeal to young people (though I cannot possibly imagine the actual appeal of those demonic little ho-bags) all you've done is your job. I don't think it's a particularly scary ruling for creative rights.

should have been written by someone who understands copyright law.

"Impound and destroy" is boilerplate language. If Mattel's copyrights are found to have been damaged by the Bratz line, then allowing them to stay on the market is perpetrating that damage. There are only two possible solutions in that case: Mattel takes ownership and control of the entire Bratz line, or the merchandise is, uh, impounded and destroyed.

Kinda like exactly what happens when counterfeit merchandise for sports teams, bands, tv shows, etc. is discovered.

But I'll bet the inflammatory, uninformed language really helped nudge up the page views!

i have two little girls and i have banned bratz from our house. i'd be happy to go on a search and destroy mission for mattel.