It's a weird world

AN artist who photographs undressed Barbie dolls with kitchen equipment as a comment on the subservient role of women has been awarded legal fees of $US1.8 million ($2.5 million) after toymaker Mattel lost a five-year legal attempt to stop him.
Utah artist Tom Forsythe photographed 78 mostly naked Barbie dolls in kitchen ovens, under food-mixers and bathing in Martini glasses in a series of amusing yet disturbing images he calls “Barbie’s power as a beauty myth”.
Forsythe, 46, believes the dolls instil “gender-oppressive values” in girls.
“Some of these images I made overtly sexual to take Barbie completely out of the context Mattel intends,” he said. “I thought the pictures needed something that really said crass consumerism, and to me that’s Barbie.”
In 1997, he put the pictures on display at art shows in Utah and Kansas City and sold the prints for several thousand dollars.
Two years later, Mattel lawyers from warned Forsythe he was using the company’s toys without permission and ordered him to stop.
He refused, and in August 1999 received a writ claiming copyright and trademark infringement, and demanding he stop selling the pictures and destroy all the negatives.
“This is about an individual who is using our brand to sell or promote his products without our permission,” Mattel spokeswoman Lisa Marie Bongiovanni claimed. “There’s over 40 years of brand equity in that brand.”
But Federal District Court judge Ronald Lew last week ruled Mattel’s action was “groundless and unreasonable” and awarded Forsythe legal costs. The judge said the case should act as a warning to companies who tried to intimidate individuals over minor infringements of copyright.