{"id":31643,"date":"2009-10-23T15:33:23","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T19:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20091019\/1632286599.shtml"},"modified":"2009-10-23T15:33:23","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T19:33:23","slug":"mattel-now-using-song-in-commercial-which-it-once-sued-over-copyright-infringement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/31643","title":{"rendered":"Mattel Now Using Song In Commercial… Which It Once Sued Over Copyright Infringement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 1997, the band Aqua released a song called “Barbie Girl,” that was actually somewhat critical of “Barbie doll” culture. Mattel, famous for its rather aggressive intellectual property stance, wasted little time in suing the band, claiming the song infringed on the company’s rights. In 2002, everyone’s favorite appeals court judge (seriously, the guy never fails to entertain) Alex Kozinski told Mattel too bad<\/a>, parody songs are a part of what you get for being a cultural icon — and included the classic line: “The parties are advised to chill.”<\/p>\n

It took seven years since that decision, but apparently Mattel had decided to heed Judge Kozinski’s suggestion. Reader Sallo<\/a> alerts us to the news that Mattel has actually licensed the song for a commercial<\/a> — though, they “adjusted” some of the lyrics to make it a little more pro-Barbie, rather than mocking-Barbie. Still, that’s quite a jump: from suing the band for infringement to actually licensing and using the song in just a few years.<\/p>\n

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Back in 1997, the band Aqua released a song called “Barbie Girl,” that was actually somewhat critical of “Barbie doll” culture. Mattel, famous for its rather aggressive intellectual property stance, wasted little time in suing the band, claiming the song infringed on the company’s rights. In 2002, everyone’s favorite appeals court judge (seriously, the guy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}