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Lego and the IP Conundrum

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the lawyerstorms dept.

Packetknife writes: "Business 2.0 has an article on Lego and the development and business issues surrounding the Mindstorms product line. The article concentrates on intellectual property issues and the role of hackers in the development of Mindstorms. The hook to the OSS movement is obvious in the article." Interesting piece about Lego trying not to bite the hand that feeds it, even though the temptation is strong.

2 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Why the behavioral assumption? by _N0EL · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Mindstorms executives felt a strong kinship with the hackers. "We didn't want to get flamed and be the bad guy," says Mike Dooley, who was senior product marketing manager of Mindstorms before leaving Lego earlier this year. "And you don't want to get into a fight with these people. They'll shut down your website."


    On the one hand there's a "strong kinship" and on the other there's an assumption that hackers will immediately decide to turn on you by doing something extreme. Which is the feeling that Lego truly has about "hackers" who tinker with their products? Besides, shutting down a website implies a totally different type of hacking from that which involves modifying products. So once again, two different kinds of hacker get equated.

    --

    "My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."

  2. Damned straight they have a point! by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yep, they certainly do have a point. While I think that hacking their hardware/software is great (and I bet LEGO thinks so too), there's no point in poking their lawyers with a stick. IP and trademark are protect it or lose it type stuff.

    There are any number of ex-trademarks that were lost because the company didn't defend the trademark (or botched it): Aspirin, linolium, yo-yo, thermos, cellophane, milk of magnesia, lanolin, celluloid, dry ice, escalator, shredded wheat and zipper. (Source: "Made in America", Bill Bryson) While these names are now public domain, some company once created and owned them. Those companies lost big when their trademark became generic.

    I'm sure that the LEGO people would rather shoot their own feet off than have to sue someone, but you have to defend a trademark or lose it! They can't afford to lose the LEGO trademark, otherwise anyone can call their product LEGO.

    I hope Noga will understand (NogaOS?), and LEGO could give him a few bulk cases of LEGO. And then everyone could go have a cream soda with ice cream float.

    LEGO are White Hat Good Guys, Noga is White Hat Good Guy. This problem is stupid, and is just attracting the suits and lawyers.

    Now if only LEGO would make steel blocks so that I could build the perfect BattleBot!

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.