Mattel, Inc. v. Goldberger Doll Manufacturing Co.
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
365 F.3d 133 (2004)
- Written by Sarah Holley, JD
Facts
Mattel, Inc. (plaintiff) was the creator of the world-famous Barbie doll and owned all rights therein. Radio City Entertainment (defendant) operated the Radio City Music Hall theater in New York City, which featured the renowned Rockettes chorus line. To celebrate the millennium, Radio City created a doll called the Rockettes 2000 doll. Mattel brought suit alleging that Radio City infringed its copyrights by copying facial features from its Barbie dolls in designing the Rockette doll. The district court granted Radio City’s motion for summary judgment. The court assumed for the purposes of the summary-judgment motion that Radio City had copied the Rockette doll’s eyes, nose, and mouth from Barbie but concluded that such features were not protected by copyright. The court concluded after comparing the other features of the respective dolls that there was no substantial similarity and entered summary judgment for Radio City. Mattel appealed.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Leval, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 816,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
