Profiles of several Daca Recipients. Thats just a handful of the programs this weekend on booktv on cspan2. For a complete schedule, visit booktv. Org. Now we kick off the weekend with orly lobel who examines the arguments over creativity and intellectual property. [inaudible conversations] good evening, everyone, and welcome to the latest installment of the coop author series. We are pleased to have with us orliy lobel. She has taught and lectured worldwide including law schools at yale, tel aviv and beijing. She is the professor of law at university of san diego and the or author of Award Winning business book talent wants to be free. Her most recent book, you dont own me, was recently described in the new yorker as a hairraising account of an epic tale, and the Financial Times describe asked it as a real pageturner of the decadelong court battle between Toy Companies over the ownership of the immensely popular bratz dolls. Please join me in welcoming our guest for the evening, orly ol ol lobel. Thank you. So this is really special for me to be here at the harvard coop bookstore because i spent many years as a graduate student here at harvard square, here at Harvard University just roaming the shelves of the coop and loving it and really being inspired by all the different disciplines in a way that still continues to impact my research, my writing, my thinking about ethics and Market Competition and justice and all the, you know, interesting stuff that we see around us. How do we create culture, how are social icons made, equality and fairness. And this is really also how i got to this book. So ill tell you a little bit about how i started thinking about writing this book and how it opened so many windows into a lot of different issues that are really kind of of the moment and we really care about in so many ways. So you dont own me starts in our current times. It starts when barbie blueeyed, blond, tiny waist, very large breasts, very cold and never changing has dominated our markets, our images of womanhood, our childhood and our parenting for basically 60 years, since her introduction in the American Market by mattel in 1959. And the story starts when finally after really dominating 90 of the market around the world, for the First Time Ever without mattel even expecting it, suddenly almost, you know, right now in current times in the beginning of the 21st century suddenly the Holiday Season brings a new doll, a current kind of doll, a bratty doll, a fuller, more multiethnic, more sassy, trendy, something that sort of more reflects what the tastes of children, girls have right now. Suddenly they sort of it comes out on the market without mattel expecting competition, and as the judge in one of the many moments of the trial says knocks bar by off her barbie off her pedestal. And so the story begins with a very unlikely hero. Think about a shy elton john, a very creative young designer, Carter Bryant, who always dreams about being a fashion designer, has been sketching from childhood all sorts of angels and fairies, and he describes himself as being sort of that awkward boy when he was growing up in los angeles who, while other boys were maybe playing with trucks and cars and with balls outside, you know, soccer, he was actually playing with barbie. And his, and reading fashion magazines, and his mother was very supportive. She actually testified in court about all of this. And he wants to be in high fashion, but the second best when youre working in los angeles is this conglomerate, mattel, that criminals such a big market share and has such, you know, huge purchasing power of, you know, talent. He takes a job designing barbie clothes. He becomes really frustrated with the culture of mattel. He feels like its been very stagnant, theres not acceptance of new ideas. Barbie is never be changing. And, actually, when i did a lot of the research and interviews and kind of intense discovery of the Corporate Culture at mattel, i actually uncover this term that mattel executives use about not introducing competition to barbie, and they say we dont want to cannibalize barbie. They dont want to eat up, you know, what is so dominant in girls you know, play rooms and in the, what we call the pink shelves of the toy stores. So he goes away for some time, takes time off mattel, he goes back to missouri, he sketches some sketches, and theres a lot i mean, part of the roller coaster decadelong litigation is how do you actually show a moment of eureka, and where does innovation and creativity come from. But he has inspiration when hes away from mattel, also weekends and nights that becomes a big defense that is part of the trial, that he, you know, was not working at mattel when he thinks about this idea of a bratty doll. And he sells it to a competitor, and they develop without, you know, mattel knowing he leaves mattel, and they develop a huge empire that, as i said, knocks barbie off her pedestal. So i want to read to you, actually, to sort of set the stage the very first photographer from not even the first chapter, the introduction of you dont own me to give you some sense of how the story begins. She was blond and beautiful, statuesque with long, slender legs, a tiny waist and a chest so large that finnish researchers claimed any similarly endowed woman would surely tip over. For years Carter Bryant dutifully served her. He styled her hair, dressed her in skirt, dresses and luxurious gowns, adorned her in jewelry and even applied her makeup. She always looked fabulous. Day after day, week after week she was unblemished, shiny and new. And in a 3 billion industry she dominated over 90 market share for five decades. Perhaps that was carter, what carter despised, her perfection, absence of a single flaw. She never changed. While people gained weight, their skin wrinkled and sagged, their hair grayed, barbie stood perfect and frozen against a changing world. While she remained ageless and pristine, the world she had been born into ceased to exist. Everything was raunchier and more preverse. Barbie remained maddeningly clean. Carter saw beauty in the broken, the peculiar, the year, perhaps even the grotesque. Like many people trapped in deadend jobs, he experienced the angst of a servant. He imagined a new icon that better reflected the mod everybody world modern world, using the real people. Carter had not intendered to assault barbies intended to assault barbies public image. He could not have consciously dared to dream of the millions he would make from his rebellion, the millions in ini suing losses ensuing losses and the decadelong legal battle that would forever alter both the entire toy industry and the very laws governing creativity9 and competition. He certainly couldnt have foreseen the incredibly ferocious feud between his overpowering exemployer and the flamboyant entrepreneur who gambled and risked it all to take a chance on him. Nor did he predict that lawyers would drag both his life partner and his mother jane to testify on his behalf, asking them to reveal deepseeded, intimate details of his life and passions. Most certainly, his dreams would not have included suffering depressioning and a stroke at the age of 41. Carter bryant only wanted to build his own dream house away from barbie. So the story begins with Carter Bryant, but what is fascinating and what drew me to tell this story that i thought had to be told was that in order for barbie to be knocked off her pedestal and in order for a new doll line to thrive, really like a greek tragedy the parent had to be written off. And and Carter Bryant, the individual, becomes sort of a pawn and then, you know, just disappears really from the scene. And this is still a david v. Goliath story, but the david here is not Carter Bryant. Its actually a much more powerful david. It is isaac larion, a jewishiranian immigrant who starts, found his own toy company and is really kind of that old, hes the owner now because of bratz, the largest, most lucrative, privatelyheld toy company in the united states. Because he really has that ability to go over, go after or resist the goliath, mattel, that as the story unfolds you see how it really uses everything it can to fight off competition, different expressions, images of barbie that they dont control. So going after not just entrepreneurs and other toymaker, but going after artists that represent barbie in a different way, musicians, film producers. Theres just sort of a roller coaster story of who mattel, you know, i views in that, in the scene as presenting challenges. And another thing that was fascinating is how much history repeats in this sense, because when you actually go to, when i started uncovering the history of these dolls and these cultural icons, it turns out that barbie from her very inception was also not really created by whoever thought that she was createed, or just like mattel said that they own bratz because an exemployee had thought about the idea for bratz, barr bys barbies inexception can be traced to inception can be traced to the new world, the american company, and the old world where she was fulled. And theres kind of a secret, dark history there of merger man porn origins of her german porn origins that mattel didnt want us to know about. How was it that in the 50s suddenly a fashion doll came into the scene . Because before that, you know, girls would play with baby dolls, kind of imagining themselves as mothers maybe. But for the first time, theyre playing with, you know, a real not very realistic, but a grownup woman with unrealistic proportions. And you start seeing all these colorful characters from the past. And, again, seeing how, you know, history repeats in that sense. So ill realize to you ill read to you a little bit about if youve watched mad men and you know about some of the history of advertising and marketing in the 50s and the 60s and the whole culture there. This is the real kind of mad men. So they hire this guru, another immigrant, austrian immigrant who really transforms the way that marketing is done, and mattel is really innovative in using consumer psychology, really psychology, freudian psychology in marketing and advertising. So this is the marketing guru they hire. In the 1950s he transformed products beyond their mundane function. Soap was about sensuality, not personal hygiene. Fact relieved stress, symbolized tobacco relieved stress and was a reward for a good day at the office. And smoking and health concerns, efforts to reduce the amount of smoking signify a willingness to sacrifice pleasure in order to assuage their feeling of guilt. Guilt may cause harmful, physical effects not at all caused by the cigarettes used which may be extremely mild. Such guilt feelings alone may be the real cause of the injurious consequences rather than a lethal habit, tobacco smoking, he said, was comparable to sucking at the nipples of a gigantic world breast. And i apologize for the audience that brought kids. [laughter] one campaign displayed a man smoking next to his date captioned smoking rounds out other forms of enjoyment, elicits six then along with tobacco as another reward for a good day at the office. Lipstick, too, was a phallic play on that desire and sub consciously hinted to women and men buying makeup for women an invitation to fellatio. Triggers mens fantasies of a mistress. And he writes all of this, and he actually is very, very clear about what he is trying to do in his marketing. And then, you know, suddenly hes asked, well, how about marketing to children . How do we do that . How do we convince mothers to buy a clearly sexualizedded doll for their little girls . And theres a lot of thought that i sort of uncover in the book. The other thing that i want to say about what drew me to tell this story which, you know, again, its sort of this legal thriller that opens so many questions about our contemporary times and how we compete is that this case really i started looking at it when i was writing my previous book, talent wants to be free, and then i was showing sort of more in the, in my Research Field how employers have this mindset of not letting employees use their own ideas and not letting them move from competitor to competitor and how that has not only a real cost on the lives of workers and our careers, but actually on regions and what kind of products we have and what consumers can experience and how innovation happens and how collaboration happens. And i was very honored and fortunate that in the summer of 2016 i actually got a call from the white house. I like saying that, so ill say it again. I got a call from the white house to talk about talent wants to be free before people from the president s, president obamas policy team and representatives from the treasury department, the department of justice and the Labor Department as well as representatives from the states, the various straits. And they were states. And they were very concerned about noncompete policy that i was researching and a lot of scholarly articles that i published and in talent wants to be free. And i became part of a working group that in october 2016 was kind of culminated in the president s call to action to the states to try to curtail this rise in trying to fence the mobility of employees. But when i the more and more i looked at this case in you dont own me of mattel, it became clear to me its not just about the pure noncompete clauses, but there are a lot of different areas of law and ways, and contractual ways like in this case of asking employees and weve all signed these contracts with whatever industry you work at asking them to assign all of their ideas, all of their knowhow, all of their creations, creativity, innovation, inventions at weekends and nights included to the employer and really de facto creating these fences even if you dont use the blunt language of you cant move to a competitor. So i started delving into this case, but when i did, of course, the cinematic quality and the roller coaster, you know, wild facts and the colorful personalities of this case just became very, very clear. It became clear that its not just about that. That we have here a case that opens questions about the american dream, the rise of feminism, the making of icons, about marketing and consumer psychology, about betrayal, spying, racism. One of the reviewers said its a is civil action set in toy stores. And another reviewer said elle woods referring to legally blond would eat this story alive. And i think, you know, what happens in the trial really, when you read it, you get a sense of how much the kind of battle or dispute that starts as though its a contractual dispute between an employer, a powerful corporation and a previous employee. You see how it becomes really about the emotions and the passions and ther rationallalties a lot of times irrationalities a lot of times of executives operating in markets and how theres often times this use of the courtroom as a shej hammer to kind of sledgehammer to kind of work things out that should be worked out in the market context. So one of the things that is really fascinating is how, how much these personalities matter. You can see this because this trial happened twice. And this is what i keep referring to as roller coaster events. The same facts and the same, you know, plaintiff and defendants, when they come before a different jury, two sets of juries, two sets of judges, two sets of attorneys because the teams of attorneys change, it becomes a completely different environment, completely different trial and sort of setting in the courtroom. And claims about, actually, the corporate ethics of the very corporation that initiated the trial come about. So in this, in the kind of next rounds of, you know, the trial one of the things that starts happening and is very important is that mga, who was sued by mattel as having stolen this idea for a brat9ty doll because bratty doll because they hired a former employee, they find out a lot of details about what mattel has been doing to them and other competitors. So ill read to you a couple paragraphs on this. Mga couldnt figure out how mattel was anticipating its every move until a mattel insider jumped ship and is revealed shocking information about mattels practices. Keller, Jennifer Keller whos the attorney that comes onboard later and really shifts the whole kind of jury emotions, told the jury that mattel was the worst type of fender in the of offender in the corporate espionage world, the kind that maintains its own corporate espionage department. They had a manual called how to steal manual that was internally used. She described to the jury mattels conduct as unlawful, outrageous, despicable and argued that it cost mga tens of millions in losses. Mga presented evidence that while mattel was preparing for its final attack on mga in the courtroom, it also engaged in illegal economic espionage. Mga terms mattels scorched earth strategy as the worst type of market battle. Together these two frontiers litigation and spying became mattels greatest weapons in the innovation wars. Litigation to drive competition out of the market and spying to gain an unfair advantage over the hearts and dollars of consumers. As mga told the jury, barbie was flailing, and barbie was failing, and mattel executives were in a tate of panic. Mattels in a state of panic. Mattels desperation grew as bratzs population exploded. In internal memos, mattel employees were instructed to use the code name nhb instead of mga. Can you crack the code . Nhb is one letter off mga. Bringing to mind another shift of letters in space odyssey, the sentient computer h. A. L. Is often thought to be based on a oneletter shift from the name ibm, though this has been denied by stanley kubrick. Mattel too denied that nhb was a code. But when it comes to the next hot plastic toy, loose lips can sink a plastic toy ship. So all of these questions that came and the kind of facts that were discovered in the courtroom really bring a lot of pause to not just to the toy and Entertainment Industry, but how we battle and how we create markets and how we create culture. And im happy to talk about, you know, a lot of the different aspects about the book, but one of the things that becomes very clear is that right now theres this moment of a lot of uncovering of corporation culture with the metoo movement. And what i want to suggest to you is that a lot of these contracts, its really two sides of the same coin. That we see a lot of attempts by concentrated markets to both silence the speech of insiders when they see wrongdoing, when they see misconduct whether its Sexual Misconduct or other kind of misconduct, and they also have this