Mattel's Lawsuit To Claim Ownership Of Bratz Comes Back To Bite Big Time: Told To Pay $309 Million
from the damn dept
As Stephan Kinsella notes, "live by IP, die by IP." You may recall the infamous legal fight over who owns the Bratz dolls. I won't go through the full history, but basically Mattel claimed that it owned the rights to Bratz dolls, because the creator of those dolls worked at Mattel (though not in a doll designing job) at the time he developed the dolls (not during work time). That guy eventually went to competitor MGA who produced the Bratz line of dolls. Mattel racked up an early series of wins in the case. Those wins seemed far overreaching. Not only did they give Mattel the rights to the original Bratz dolls, but all future plans as well, despite none of that having anything to do with Mattel.Thankfully, sanity was regained at the appelate level, and eventually things turned around to bite Mattel for bringing the lawsuit in the first place. That's because the lawsuit allowed MGA to countersue over trade secrets violations. In April, we noted that this might end up costing Mattel $88.5 million, as the court rejected all of Mattel's claims and sided with MGA on the trade secret claim.
Turns out the result was even more damaging for Mattel. The court didn't just stick with the $88.5 million award the jury gave. Instead, while he "reduced" the jury award to $85 million, he then tacked on another $85 million in punitive damages and told Mattel to pay $137 million in legal fees to MGA. Total bill? Mattel has to fork over $309.8 million. All for a lawsuit Mattel brought in the first place. And that doesn't count the estimated $400 million that Mattel spent in legal fees during this fight. Add it all up and Mattel's decision to sue appears to have cost the company upwards of $700 million dollars.
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Filed Under: barbie, bratz, intellectual property
Companies: mattel, mga
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Nicely Done
Or maybe not. Meanwhile, in the world of the corporate psychopath and narcissist, all these legal losses are definitely somebody else's fault. Who could have ever predicted what those mean old judges might do? The executives and lawyers feel terrible about what has happened. Further punishing them would be dreadful. Sacking them would be out of the question, they are highly skilled and important corporate officers. Indeed they might need to be given a luxury holiday at company expense plus a nice bonus, to make them feel better.
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Re: Nicely Done
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Re: Nicely Done
Or even worse, they could go to a competitor and start a new toy line that Matell would have to sue over.
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Good.
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Re:
Mattel, Inc.(NasdaqGS: MAT )
Market Cap: 8.40B
Total Assets (from balance sheet): 5.42B
Letmesee, according to Mike, this lawsuit cost $0.7B. So if they pursue the all litigation all the time route, I figure their assets can support at least seven such lawsuits.
After that, there's an extra $3B in the market cap. Dunno if that can be tapped to fund further lawsuits...
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Of course not.
Or will it continue to throw good money after bad?
Of course they will.
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Of course not.
Or will it continue to throw good money after bad?
Of course they will.
Especially since they can count of the gov't bailing them out.
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400 million in legal fees?
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Re: 400 million in legal fees?
Them's some bigass billables, man.
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Re: 400 million in legal fees?
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Seems the only people who won were the lawyers......
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Markets are time sensitive. They may have lost the opportunity.
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Just two words: IM POSSIBLE.
In any event, it's another story where chasing money leads to stupid excesses.
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Re: Just two words: IM POSSIBLE.
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unbelievable
I can't wrap my head around that number.
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Re: unbelievable
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Re: Re: unbelievable
Oh wait...
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$400 million in legal fees?
I'm trying to figure out exactly what that many lawyers could have been doing for that length of time on ONE case.
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Re: $400 million in legal fees?
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Re: Re: $400 million in legal fees?
Or it could be 200 attorneys working for 4 years solid at a $250/hour billing rate.
I guess there are court costs, etc. to figure in, but that amount still seems really high.
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Re: Re: Re: $400 million in legal fees?
Partners at big firms bill $1000+ hour.
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Re: $400 million in legal fees?
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Re: $400 million in legal fees?
The other $350 million went to the hookers and blow that supported the life size doll comparison party that went on for 6 months while they tried to figure out who was best at 'pinning the tale' on the dolls....
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The legal system desperately needs some revamping.
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Re: The legal system desperately needs some revamping.
Have Bar Associations regulating everything, and deciding who gets to practise and who doesn’t?
Why do you think the costs are so high?
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Re: Re: The legal system desperately needs some revamping.
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Truth?
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$400M...
Its still too much money to be thrown away. I wonder how much of the court fees and penalties are counted as actual revenue for our government.
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Too Big To Fail
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Way to go Mattel.
Unfortunately I don't see them changing their ways. They're probably bitching about how 'bad' the judge was. Trolls gotta troll.
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the lawyers won
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Firstly stolen from Europe
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Firstly stolen from Europe
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