More legal stuff! You're still reading, so that is a good sign.
Enjoy Part 3!
Enjoy Part 3!
A History of LEGO
Lawsuits
When
other companies began to produce their own brick based products, it cut into
The LEGO Group’s profits. As with any
monopoly, LEGO wanted to protect their market share and keep their profits.
They do so by finding products and designs they believe are infringing on their
designs. In 2005, they filed a lawsuit
against the largest of their rivals, Mega Construx, who were then known as Mega
Bloks. The LEGO Group claimed that Mega Bloks was violating their pending Canadian
trademark for the LEGO brick design. Canadian law allow you to protect an
unregistered or pending trademark, and this allowed LEGO to protect their
expired patent because they were in the process of trademarking it. The
Canadian Supreme Court sided with Mega Bloks, because the design of the brick
was purely for functional purposes. The trademark laws in Canada are "not
intended to prevent the competitive use of utilitarian features of products." When The LEGO Group’s patents expired, the design fell into public
domain. LEGO’s name, products and advertising are still protected, but the
monopoly that LEGO had in the brick-building toys industry in Canada has ended
.
Not
all of The LEGO Group’s lawsuits are unsuccessful. In 2011, they filed a
lawsuit against another rival, the Chinese company BanBao. In this legal
battle, LEGO was not defending its brick patent, but rather the specific design
of the LEGO sets. BanBao had been creating sets that appeared to be almost
direct copies of what LEGO had produced. The Dutch court sided with LEGO in this
instance, since the products were too similar to The LEGO Group’s products.
This case is incredibly similar to the one LEGO has filed against another
Chinese company. The LEGO Group is defending the designs of their sets from one
of the largest Chinese “clone-brands,” Lepin. The company has been copying the
majority of LEGO sets and selling them for significantly less.
These two cases revolve around copyright laws. The companies had been copying the
specific designs of LEGO sets, and toy designs fall under copyright law as well. Copies are not just specific to the set design, as some of the
individual set components are subject to protection as well.
The
LEGO Group has spent many years and massive sums of money in protecting its
brand. In 2011, LEGO was sued by the British company Best-Lock for restricting the
flow of their products and using U.S. law to prevent Best-Lock’s products from
entering the U.S. The LEGO Group claimed that the products were infringing on
their Minifigure design. Best-Lock claimed that the copyrighting of the
Minifigure was merely a technical design and was not applicable to copyright.
At around this time, LEGO had begun the process of trademarking the Minifigure,
which also appeared as an issue in the case. Best-Lock used a similar argument
to defend their copies of the Minifigure, they said it was a technical design
and the patent for it expired. The court decided in LEGO’s favor. The design of
the Minifigure was not for a practical, utilitarian purpose. The design was
meant to represent a human form and therefore the design was applicable for
trademark. The copying of the Minifigure has been found to be an
illegal practice.
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