Estrela’s president says he will fight for games that Justice ordered to return to Hasbro

Carlos Tilkian, 68, turns 29 this year at the helm of the toy manufacturer Estrela. In 1993, when he joined the company as vice president, the company was still owned by the founding family, the Adlers. In the early 1990s, the “enemies” of Brazilian toys were Chinese rivals, which began to be offered on the market for a much lower price.

Now, the dispute is in court with former partner Hasbro. The American says she owns brands that were abrasileiradas by Estrela, while the two had a commercial agreement. Estrela says that the partnership was made with third-party companies, later purchased by Hasbro – a fact that, in the Brazilian’s view, prevents the American from demanding the registration of trademarks at the INPI (National Institute of Industrial Property).

At the center of the toy fight are brands such as Banco Imobiliário, Detective, Cara a Cara, Cilada, Jogo da Vida, Vira Letras and Combate.

“We are the biggest game makers in the country and we are not going to hand over our brands, created with great sacrifice, to Hasbro,” he told sheet Carlos Tilkian. “Furthermore, game rules are not protected in patents in Brazil, according to the Industrial Property Law,” said the businessman, adding that he was still “shocked” by Hasbro’s request to destroy toys.

Both Estrela and Hasbro are preparing to appeal to the STJ (Superior Court of Justice), in Brasília, until the 9th of March, against the sentence passed by the TJ-SP (Court of Justice of São Paulo) on the 8th of March. of February. By the decision, Estrela was authorized to keep the brands Banco Imobiliário, Comandos em Ação and Senhora Cabeça de Batata, which were being requested by Hasbro.

On the other hand, the Brazilian will have to destroy the Super Massa clay pots, because the Justice understood that they refer to the competing brand Play-Doh, from Hasbro. Super Massa and 16 other trademarks registered by Estrela at the INPI must be transferred to Hasbro. In addition, Estrela was ordered to pay R$50 million in royalties to the American.

The amount is high for a company the size of Estrela, which earned R$136 million in the first nine months of 2021. In the period, the company suffered a loss of R$ 11 million.

Tilkian argues that all brands claimed by Hasbro in court were already from Estrela, before being developed by the American. “We’ll appeal to keep them all,” he said.

However, research by sheet together with the manufacturers’ websites, indicates that, with the exception of Super Massa, the main brands in dispute were launched first by Hasbro (or by companies that later became part of the group, such as Milton Bradley, which created the Jogo da Vida) .

Founded in 1937 by the German Siegfried Adler, who bought a small factory of cloth dolls and wooden carts located in Belém, a neighborhood on the east side of São Paulo, Estrela became the largest Brazilian toy manufacturer in the following decades. But with the opening of the market to foreign products in the early 1990s, it lost ground to those imported from China.

When Tilkian, a business administrator who had made a career out of the former Gessy Lever (now Unilever) joined the company, it was already in trouble. In 1995, he was elected president and, in 1996, he acquired control of Estrela from Mário Adler, son of the founder. Today Tilkian holds 94% of the company’s common shares. Two-thirds of the company’s shares are preferred and are on the market.

According to Tilkian, Hasbro decided to unilaterally break the agreement with Estrela in 2007, ending a partnership signed in the 1970s. “They decided it was convenient to open a commercial office here in Brazil and import, they never wanted to produce anything in the country”, stated.

THE sheet found, however, that Hasbro terminated the contract because Estrela had stopped paying royalties on toys developed in partnership. Tilkian denies it. “After they terminated the contract, we changed the ‘trade dress’ [características da aparência visual de um produto] of all toys, became ours”, says the businessman.

The debt of R$ 50 million in royalties, however, set by the TJ-SP, refers to the continuation of the commercialization, by Estrela, of the products that were the result of the partnership with Hasbro.

wanted by sheet, Hasbro informed that it “does not comment on ongoing cases” and that, “specifically regarding the dispute with Estrela, it reaffirms its confidence in the Brazilian Judiciary”. The American’s defense is made by Lee, Brock, Camargo Advogados. Estrela is represented by Sergio Bermudes Advogados and Wald, Antunes, Vita and Blattner Advogados.