Mattel Faces a Good News/Bad News Pincer Week

We’ve written about the at-the-time successful Mattel prosecution of its IP against MGA Entertainment  (Bratz dolls) … and the subsequent reversal … and now, during the retrial, MGA has upped the ante.  In what might be ultimately a huge bargaining chip, MGA has filed a $1B antitrust lawsuit against Mattel Inc., charging monopolistic practices. Consider this filing a new, organized and enhanced version of the RICO charges MGA alleged in their counterclaim last August.

At the same time, “across the pond,” Mattel signed a multi-year licensing deal with Stockholm-based Stardoll, a virtual community for teenage (and pre-teen) girls, with a huge brand following (reportedly 92 million registered users, sporting 15 million unique users per month). This license deal should bear fruit in time for the 2011 holiday season.      

Mattel has been advertising on Stardoll for a while, so they must be pretty confident about what such a license can produce.