June 2008
I’m a Barbie Girl, In a Bratz World
Toy giants Mattel and MGA Entertainment have been in court this month in the US over the rights to Barbie’s alter ego, the popular Bratz doll range. Mattel, the owners of the rights in the Barbie dolls, have claimed that the Bratz dolls were created by a former employee of Mattel while he was still employed by them.
In evidence before the federal court in California, the employee in question, Mr. Carter Bryant, claimed to have come up with the idea for the Bratz dolls in 1998 after he had left Mattel and moved back to his parents’ home. The idea centred round dolls based on the fashions and hair styles of modern teenagers, which eventually led to the Bratz sketches. Bryant returned to Mattel in 1999 to design clothes for the Barbie lines, before approaching MGA with the Bratz idea. He joined MGA in 2001 and developed the Bratz dolls.
In 2004 Mattel sued Bryant for the $35m royalties he had been paid by MGA for the Bratz dolls. In 2005 MGA sued Mattel for copyright infringement claiming that the Barbie dolls had started to resemble the Bratz line. In 2006, Mattel added MGA and its CEO, Isaac Larian, to the suit. Mattel have recently dropped its claim against Bryant, and while the terms of the settlement are yet to be disclosed, Mattel claims that it will use the details of the settlement to support its case.
We await the court’s decision.
Briffa’s Opinion
This case is likely to come down to the facts and to the details of Bryant’s contract with Mattel. However it is an important reminder of how difficult it is to assess whether an employee’s creative efforts are owned by their employers.
Under US copyright law, like in the UK, an employer owns the copyright in any work which is created by an employee in the course of his employment. However since copyright subsists automatically in the creation of an original qualifying work, when and where an employee created a particular work will be key to whether the employee or the employer owns the rights. This is why it is important to have clearly defined employment and freelancer contracts, and a clear record of what employees have created for their employers.