The parent companies of the doll lines Bratz (MGA) and Barbie (Mattel) are throwing down big time in a California courthouse.
The house of Barbie says it’s entitled to a big chunk of the estimated $2 billion a year Bratz empire because the whore looking dolls’ creator, some guy named Carter Bryant, was an employee of Mattel when he birthed them.
The LA Times reports, that so far, this case has been all about timing.
Bryant was a struggling songwriter when he got a job designing fashions, hair and makeup on the Barbie line at Mattel in 1995 and stayed until April 1998, when he left for the Springfield, Missouri, area to live with his parents. He got a job at an Old Navy store.
Bryant and MGA argue that Bratz came out of the designer’s imagination — and he did the key sketches of it — during the Missouri break. Bryant returned to Mattel in January 1999, defecting to MGA in October 2000.
Mattel is pushing the theory that Bryant created Bratz during his second stint at the company.
The battle for the Bratz fortune probably won’t be settled ’til July.
We have a feeling that had Bryant pitched the vanilla seeming Barbie folks his ho doll creations, they probably would’ve rejected it anyways!
Another source reports that MGA has countersued, saying Mattel changed the design of its own My Scene dolls to more closely resemble the Bratz line and used its leverage with retailers to stifle competition.
Funnily, the Bratz creator has said that he was inspired by seeing the clothes worn by students as he drove past Springfield’s Kickapoo High School, which is the alma mater of Brad Pitt.
Did the girls Brad used to date look so trannylicious?
[Barbie image via WENN.]
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