Ex-Mattel worker made Bratz doll

The jury reached its verdict in the copyright infringement lawsuit filed in the US District Court in Riverside, said Mattel attorney John Quinn.

The news came after the close of regular-session trading on Wall Street, but Mattel's shares shot up $1.22, or 6.7%, to $19.50 in after-hours dealings.

Mattel, the maker of Barbie, filed the lawsuit against MGA Entertainment, which began marketing the line of sassy urban dolls in 2001.

Mattel has claimed it owned the rights to the popular Bratz line because its creator, Carter Bryant, came up with the concept while working for Mattel.

The jury also ruled that Bryant conceived the name Bratz while working at Mattel, Quinn said.

Further details on the verdict were not immediately available.

Amy Sabrin, who represents privately held MGA, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.

The jury will consider possible damages in the case in a separate proceeding.

Bryant reached a confidential settlement with Mattel on the eve of the trial and the company dropped its lawsuit against him.

The timing of Bryant's creation was key in Mattel's suit.

Mattel attorneys argued that Bryant worked for the company between September 1995 and April 1998 and then returned for a second stint at Mattel between January 1999 and October 2000.

He signed an agreement that gave Mattel the right to anything he designed while employed there, the lawyers argued.

In a summary of the case, Mattel said that MGA began showing Bratz prototypes a month after Bryant left Mattel and began selling the hugely popular dolls in toy stores five months later.

But Bryant testified during the six-week trial that the sketches he showed MGA in 2000 were transferred from originals he made in the summer of 1998 - between his two employment stints with Mattel - that were inspired as he watched kids walking from school, Steve Madden shoe ads in Seventeen magazine, and the cover of the Dixie Chicks album "Chicks With Attitude."

Sales of Barbie doll, once a near rite-of-passage of American girlhood, have slid since Bratz came on the scene. Domestic Barbie sales were down 15% in 2007 and 12% in the first quarter of 2008, while international sales increased 6% in 2008 as opposed to 12% the previous year.

Los Angeles-based 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.

- AP