And the winner is… Design Innovations. This kind of thing is always of interest to Industrial Designers; there are few topics as hot as Who Owns The Rights. You can read the full press release from the winner’s attorneys (Link) but here are excerpts:

… a jury has found that toy company Fisher-Price misappropriated a concept developed by Design Innovation for use in the Fisher-Price Rescue Heroes line of products. … The jury awarded Design Innovation damages of $1.7 million and also found Fisher-Price guilty of unfair competition, having acted in bad faith in its misappropriation of the toy concept. … Design Innovation and Reiling conceived of an idea for incorporating a still or moving image into each of the Rescue Heroes’ backpacks. This would allow a child to view the respective characters on rescue missions, thus increasing the play value of the toys. … Design Innovation and Reiling had presented their concept to Fisher-Price in 1998, who informed them that they were genuinely excited by the concept and then paid the inventors two option fees to secure the concept and prevent it from being taken elsewhere. … In 2001, Fisher-Price introduced a line of action figures and related accessories that incorporated images in their backpacks — similar to the concept presented to them by Design Innovation and Reiling … Fisher-Price argued that they had independently created these products after having seen and optioned the Design Innovation and Reiling concepts. The jury rejected this argument.

I suspect I’ll hear more since Design Innovations is in my neighborhood. If anything interesting comes up, I’ll update this entry.

via Core77