Mattel vs. MGA: The Bratz Doll Copyright Battle

The Mattel vs. MGA Bratz doll copyright battle ended with MGA Entertainment keeping the Bratz brand and collecting roughly $138 million from Mattel in attorneys’ fees and interest. It took nearly a decade, two jury trials, and two trips to the Ninth Circuit to get there. Mattel argued that its former Barbie designer had created Bratz on Mattel’s clock, which would have made the entire multi-billion-dollar line Mattel property. That theory won once, then unraveled on appeal, and never recovered.

How the Fight Started

Carter Bryant worked for Mattel as a Barbie designer twice: from 1995 to 1998, and again from 1999 to 2000. Both times he signed an employment agreement assigning to Mattel the rights to inventions he created during his employment.¹ Bryant and MGA said he sketched the first Bratz concepts in 1998, in the gap between those two stints. Mattel said he made the sketches while on its payroll.

Bryant left Mattel in 2000 and brought the concept to Isaac Larian, CEO of MGA Entertainment. MGA launched Bratz in 2001. By 2005 the line was pulling in around $2 billion a year and had become a real rival to Barbie. Mattel filed suit in 2004 in the Central District of California, alleging copyright infringement and breach of contract.² The whole case turned on whether the Bratz concept existed during Bryant’s employment, and whether his contract reached it if so.

Mattel’s 2008 Win and the Constructive Trust

The first trial went to a jury in 2008 before Judge Stephen Larson. The jury found that Bryant had developed the Bratz concept while employed at Mattel and awarded $100 million in damages: $90 million on contract-related claims against MGA and Larian, plus $10 million for copyright infringement.²

The bigger blow came from the bench. Judge Larson imposed a constructive trust over the entire Bratz trademark portfolio, transferring ownership to Mattel, and enjoined MGA from selling any Bratz-branded product, including the dolls, accessories, video games, and the Bratz movie.³ For a moment, Mattel owned Bratz.

The 2010 Ninth Circuit Reversal

MGA appealed, and in July 2010 the Ninth Circuit reversed in an opinion by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski. The court focused on the contract itself. Bryant’s agreement required him to assign his “inventions,” a term the contract defined by listing examples: discoveries, improvements, processes, designs, computer programs, and formulas. Those examples are all concrete things. Ideas, the court noted, are “ephemeral and often reflect bursts of inspiration that exist only in the mind.”²

The Ninth Circuit held the contract was ambiguous about whether raw ideas were covered at all. That ambiguity meant the trial court should not have treated the ownership question as settled and handed over the brand. The court vacated the constructive trust, the injunction, and the declaratory judgment that had given Mattel the Bratz trademarks, and sent the case back for a new trial.

The 2011 Retrial and MGA’s Counterattack

The second trial in 2011, before Judge David Carter, went in a very different direction. MGA brought a counterclaim accusing Mattel of misappropriating trade secrets through corporate espionage.

The evidence was concrete. Mattel ran a “Market Intelligence” department that sent employees to international toy fairs with instructions to get into competitors’ private showrooms. Internal documents told employees to create false identifications, including fake business cards with home phone numbers or fabricated numbers rather than Mattel’s. Senior Mattel employees testified that department members posed as retail buyers to get inside MGA showrooms and gather information on unreleased products and marketing plans.⁴ The court found the conduct violated Mattel’s own written code of conduct.

The jury rejected Mattel’s ownership claims entirely and found that Mattel had misappropriated MGA’s trade secrets. It awarded MGA $88.5 million, later reduced by the judge to $85 million. The court then added an equal $85 million in punitive damages under California’s trade secrets law, which allows enhanced damages for willful and malicious misappropriation.⁵ The district court also awarded MGA attorneys’ fees under the Copyright Act and trade secret law.

The 2013 Ninth Circuit Ruling

Mattel appealed again. In January 2013, the Ninth Circuit vacated the entire $170 million trade secrets judgment along with related fees. The reason was procedural: MGA’s trade secret counterclaim was not compulsory, meaning it did not arise from the same core facts as Mattel’s ownership claims. It should have been filed as a separate lawsuit.⁵

Two things the court left alone decided the war. MGA remained the owner of Bratz. And MGA remained the prevailing party on Mattel’s copyright infringement claim, which meant its attorneys’ fees under the Copyright Act stayed in place. In December 2013, Mattel paid approximately $138 million, including accrued interest, to satisfy that judgment.⁶

MGA’s Refile in State Court

Because the Ninth Circuit had vacated the trade secret award on procedural grounds rather than on the merits, MGA tried again. In January 2014 it filed a fresh trade secret misappropriation lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court, seeking over $1 billion in damages based on the same espionage allegations.⁶

It failed. The trial court granted summary judgment to Mattel, holding that MGA’s claim was barred by California’s three-year statute of limitations for trade secret actions. The clock had started no later than August 2007, when MGA first raised the espionage issue as a defense in the federal case. A 2014 state filing was years too late. The California Court of Appeal affirmed in 2019.⁷

What the Case Changed

The lasting effect of the litigation sits inside the 2010 Ninth Circuit opinion. Employment agreements that assign an employee’s “inventions” to the employer do not automatically capture raw ideas that never took tangible form, at least where the contract’s own examples all point to concrete work product. Companies that want to own an employee’s unexpressed ideas need contract language that says so directly. Fifteen years of litigation, and the practical takeaway for the toy industry and every other creative employer was a lesson in how to draft one clause.

1
Reuters. Bratz Doll Creator Tells of Origins at Mattel Trial
2
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Mattel, Inc. v. MGA Entertainment, Inc. (2010)
3
GovInfo. Mattel, Inc. v. MGA Entertainment, Inc. – Ninth Circuit Opinion
4
U.S. District Court, Central District of California. Mattel, Inc. v. MGA Entertainment, Inc. – Order on Post-Trial Motions
5
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Mattel, Inc. v. MGA Entertainment, Inc. (2013)
6
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Mattel, Inc. Annual Report Filing
7
Justia Law. MGA Entertainment, Inc. v. Mattel, Inc. (2019)