Maxim sues Playboy over alleged copycat 'Playmate' competition

By Blake Brittain

Jan 21 (Reuters) - The publishers of men's magazine Maxim have sued rival Playboy PLBY.O in Manhattan federal court, alleging Playboy created its "Great Playmate Search" competition using trade secrets and other material taken from Maxim's similar "Cover Girl" competition.

Maxim's lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, alleges that Playboy employees stole proprietary technology and copyrighted material from Maxim's competition and used it to build an online platform to host its tournament for aspiring Playboy models.

Spokespeople for Playboy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Maxim spokesperson Justin Lewis said in a statement on Wednesday that the company "will let the complaint speak for itself and will address the matter through the legal process."

The lawsuit said that New York-based Maxim has been running its Cover Girl competition since 2018 to give aspiring models a chance to appear on the magazine's cover, boosting Maxim's brand and revenue. It said Playboy in 2025 "embarked on a scheme to copy, misappropriate, and reverse-engineer Maxim’s novel and proprietary technologies and processes for running online contests."

The complaint said that Playboy employees signed up as "dummy" Cover Girl participants in 2025 and copied several aspects of Maxim's contest platform, including its website design and competition rules and mechanics, to build its Great Playmate Search.

Maxim said Playboy launched its competition last year and plans to run it again early this year. Playboy's CEO Ben Kohn said on an earnings call last year that he expects paid voting for the competition to be "a multimillion dollar annual business for us going forward," according to the complaint.

Maxim requested a court order blocking Playboy from misusing its trade secrets and an unspecified amount of monetary damages.

The case is Maxim Inc v. Playboy Inc, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:26-cv-00530.

For Maxim: Christopher Clark and Geoffrey Coll of Clark Smith Villazor

For Playboy: attorney information not yet available

(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington)

((blake.brittain@tr.com; +1 (202) 938-5713))