Leggo my Lego?

All the world loves a bad pun.

From the International Herald Tribune:

Lego is the king of the toy-block kingdom. What isn’t known, however, is that Lego has been zealously guarding its trademarks and other intellectual property rights since their original patents (U.S. Patent No. 3005282.pdf (333 KB)) expired in 1978. Using trademark and copyright law, Lego has continued its efforts to expand and police its exclusive hold on the toy brick market.

“There are many who have tried to capitalize on the good will we have built with consumers,” said Poul Hartvig Nielsen, head of legal services at Lego.

Competitors disagree and argue that Lego’s efforts are an impermissible attempt to use intellectual property law to unfairly dominate the building-block world.

“They are a company that enjoyed many years of monopoly in this market category, and now they want to stifle anything competing against them in the construction-toy aisle,” said Brahm Segal, a vice president and lawyer for Mega Bloks of Montreal.

While Lego has had some success with protecting its domain, Canada has limited Lego’s claims in a 2002 passing off case.

Fun fact: since 1949, more than 204 billion lego bricks have been manufactured. Stacked end on end, they would reach the moon and back 2.5 times.

A very detailed history of the Lego company (with drawings and catalogs going back to the 1940s) can be found at Technica.

UPDATE: Martin Schwimmer over at The Trademark Blog scooped me on this article in the IHT – Martin also has some additional information, so head on over there to check it out as well.

You may be interested in reading the following related posts:

1. LEGO My LEGOS – The Significance of “S”
2. Confessions of a Trademark Junkie
3. Legal Imperatives on Intellectual Property Management
4. … and the us state department offers funds for overseas ip training programs
5. Taiwan Intellectual Property Academy Opens

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, February 3, 2005 at 5:26 pm
Permalink: Leggo my Lego?
1 Comment

Comments

On May 28th, 2006 at 3:05am Ramona Petrick said…

I am looking for the girl lego set the one with the nursery