Abusing Your IP Costs Millions
As my co-worker Elizabeth Rader says, “frivolous copyright infringement suits aren’t just lottery tickets.” The plaintiff sometimes gets burned. It happened last week in the case of Mattel v. Walking Mountain Productions. An artist took some obviously parodic photos of a Barbie doll. Mattel sued. The artist won, and the judge awarded the artist $1.5 million in attorney’s fees and almost $300,000 in other costs.
Mattel should have heeded the wise words of Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit, who had earlier advised the company “to chill.”
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In the end I feel both happy and sad for the attorneys involved: Sad because they’re likely being driven into these silly lawsuits by a major client, but happy since all these lawsuits are getting them business (of course, the fact they they’re loosing them may not help in the long run).
Mattel’s always been particularly defensive of Barbie’s “good character”. I hope they’re more reasonable with their other brands (otherwise my little project using He-Man figures and FisherPrice kids might not go over too well).
In fairness, I believe Mattel’s ferocious defense of the Barbie name stems from the original creator’s [Ruth Handler] desire to allow girls to impress whatever personality they want on Barbie and, economically speaking, the fact that the Barbie line was what made Mattel the major player it is today (just look at the “Barbie section” in any toy store). Thus Mattel has very little interest in rocking the boat.
Of course, Mattel’s been burned indirectly by this policy before. Pixar wanted Barbie to be in the first “Toy Story” (’95) but Mattel would have nothing of it. Barbie became “Little Bo Peep” and the movie became a mega-hit. The second time ’round, Mattel was willing to allow Pixar to use Barbie. Ironically enough, the Barbies ended up portrayed as partying, oversexed ditzs in their brief cameo -which is likely what Mattel feared would happen in the first movie.
To quote Prof. Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School:
“Maybe now when an angry C.E.O. picks up the phone to counsel and says ‘sue this guy,’ [...] instead of saluting and sending the bill, the lawyer may say ‘I have to warn you, this could boomerang.’ ” (from today’s NY Times)
Comment by Bobak Ha'Eri — June 28, 2004 @ 7:36 pm