MGA Entertainment - the maker of the Bratz! dolls, and who has a 700K SF warehouse in Redlands, is being sued by a toy maker in Texas. Here is the article.
Here are the Legand of Nara bugs that MGA makes:
And here is the Hexbug made by the company in Texas:
On the surface, these two things do not appear all that much alike. But I would wager that the suppliers for these two toys are probably the same people. And the companies shipping the toys are likely the the same people. When your entire supply chain is outsourced all that remains is product development and marketing.
I would wager that in other areas of the world, your intellectual property rights are not as enforceable and any kind of leak can occur anywhere along the supply chain.
I have often wondered about this phenomenon in movies, why very similar movies are released by different major motion picture companies at the same time.
Think of the movie AntZ and A Bugs Life. Why are the odds of similar movies being released independently by two companies? Chances are that the people that work at these companies talk to each other and they get sold on the same idea. There are informal channels of communication and good ideas tend to get copied.
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