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Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History
An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has an exclusive video and feature of one of the most heavily guarded secrets in Lego: the security vault where they store all the Lego sets ever created, new in their boxes. 4,720 sets from 1953 to 2008. Really amazing stuff and a trip down memory lane to every person who has played with the magic bricks. All combined, the collection must be worth millions, not only because of the collector value, but also because Lego uses it as a safeguard in copyright and patent cases."
One would think this is the case, but many companies fail this. It takes an archivists' mindset to institute this as policy in the early days of a small company.
In fact I know that Microsoft was pretty bad about this in years past. Even though storage is cheap, they have had to ask employees for old products like MS-DOS 1.1 or MS-DOS 2.0 floppies from time to time, as the official archivists were unable to produce the "silvers" (copies from their golden masters sent to reproduction) or in fact any boxed copies at all.
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No karma for underrated, either, because there is no meta-moderation on under and overrated.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I don't think they had patents. They tried using Trade Mark infringement law to prevent competition, but lost in Canada.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Whoops! I'm WRONG. They did have patents which expired in Canada in 1988. The Trade Mark dispute they did lose, however.
(Goes and beats himself with fanfold paper).
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Is this an American thing? Here in .uk I've never heard them referred to as 'Legos', only ever as 'Lego'. As if it's a continuum, like water, or cheese, rather than a set of discrete objects.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Actually, even though LEGO famously patented the basic stud-and-tube brick design decades ago, the company has filed for numerous patents since then on all sorts of things.
You can view them on Google's Patent Search. Many are filed by INTERLEGO AG of Switzerland.
http://www.google.com/patents?q=interlego&btnG=Search+Patents
Among other things, LEGO has patented the track and car designs from its monorail system, a "brick vacuum" for picking up bricks, and a linear actuator system that is going to be used in the 2008 LEGO Technic sets released this fall.
I'd sell that idea to them.
I could see them creating a 1:1 car model out of metal that actually works. But ... knowing how they changed in the years, the kit would probably consist of 10 parts that only fit together how they "should". No generics, just prefabricated reassembly kits.
It's a shame, really. I loved the old "generic" Legos a lot more. Maybe with a handful of "special" parts (that could still be used in other ways). Oh, it changed so much in the past 20 years...
'scuse me while I go mourn.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.