Reply #20: Anything a designer creates while under the employ of a company, belongs to that company.

[Shakespeare]

It's what they pay her for (and quite different from the contractual nature of, say, a musician and record company). I have no problem with the law on that one. The ruling itself isn't really precedent setting--the nature (and size) of the case made it sensational, but the court (and jury) mostly had to decide just how the designer's contract with Mattel applied.

It was a fairly straightforward case--it just happens to involve jaw-dropping amounts of money, and one very popular line of toys.