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Lego Loses Its Unique Right To Make Lego Blocks
tsa writes "The European Department of Justice has decided that the Danish company Lego does not have exclusive rights to the lego building block anymore (sorry, it's in Dutch). Lego went to court after a Canadian firm had made blocks that were so like lego blocks that they even fit the real blocks made by Lego. The European judge decided that the design of the lego blocks is not protected by European trademarks and so anyone can make the blocks." If true, hopefully this will open doors for people interested in inexpensive bulk purchase of bricks of specific sizes and colors. Perhaps at long last I can build a life-sized Hemos statue for my office.
Lego tried an end-run around the law.
Copyright couldn't cover their bricks.
Patents ran out eons ago.
But Trademarks, Trademarks are perpetual... so they 'Trademark' a physical object instead of a name & logo. anybody wonder why they lost?
I was a lego boy when I grew up. I had a lot of legos.
I also had some imitation blocked made by Tyco. These immitation blocks never fit together well. You'd build something and it would fall apart. Although the bricks looked almost identical, the Tyco bricks just sucked.
So, I do worry about imitation blocks. Lego blocks are the best because they have impossibly high standards during manufacturing in order to avoid the frustration I experienced with the Tyco blocks.
If someone else is going to start really making sets to compete with Lego, let's hope they go the distance and implement quality control like Lego does.
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My parents always bought me real Lego bricks, and I have practically all of those bricks/sets 30+ years on. They still click and snap like new. Good luck getting that kind of lifespan from the cheap knock-offs.
Quality costs money, pure and simple. So, no, the choice isn't "obvious" at all.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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Probably won't help with the pirates. Real pirates!
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Personally, I hated megablocks, because the bricks are not made with the same quality as Legos. Legos have a very exacting standard they make for each brick, to guarentee they fit together and stay together when you want to, and come apart when you need them to. Megablocks I found are looser, and don't stay together as often. I'm anal. I played with Legos when I was young, but when I grew up, my son and I put together some megablocks sets he got from someone else. The comparative quality was very poor.
However, in terms of business, a competition between Megablocks and Legos is a good thing. Legos wants (I hope) to be a higher quality toy, while Megablocks is for those who are less anal and more frugal. They have carved out their own niches and provide choice for the consumer. Additional players in the market should help.
At the same time, I hope someone tackles with the idea that lego sets are too specialized now. There are so many specialty pieces that it limits the amount you can create with a single set, and limits the replay value. Back in the 80s, there were tons of new pieces that weren't all just bricks, but those pieces could still be creatively used to build new models from your imagination. The odd shaped clear plastic panel that curls around the model just so and only has one real use is annoying.
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Older Mega blocks are crap. Mega Blocks produced in recent years are just as mechanically good as Lego, and after this decision might start looking as good too.
We bought our Mega Bloks new two years ago. Unless they changed their materials very recently, I think they are still pretty bad.
I can guarantee you that quality from one supplier who has an exclusive license costs a lot more money than quality amongst competition from different suppliers.
;)
Also, if it's protected by copyright then only cheap knockoff companies manufacturing in third world sweatshops will be willing to risk a lawsuit, whereas classier, higher-quality shops will shy away. Without IP encumbrance, you'll be able to get... more expensive knockoffs.
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We use the mega blocks and duplo blocks, both. There both okay for pretending.
However, I've found that both I and my kids cannot easily take legos apart. In addition, the form factor of legos makes it easy to make their intended toy (if you want to spend the time), but comparatively hard to make other things.
I remember the days of American Bricks, though, when we'd make marble machines, spaceships (tiny, med, large, and super), ships, and whatnot. Yeah, it didn't have all the specialized parts that lego has. But that's what imagination is for. I remember playing the Children's Space Revolution (in 1972, with a theme song that was remarkably similar to that which came out for Star Wars), and other stories that we made up as we went.
I never saw that with legos -- not with my brothers, not with my oldest son. We gave it up. The kids do pretend with Mega Bloks. As a parent, I'd much prefer something that falls apart every so often, to something that you can't get apart without tremendous effort.
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I used to do QA for Flextronics, so it's no surprise to me that it didn't end well. The majority of their workforce gets brought in from headhunter temp services like Manpower, told they'll be offered a permanent position when their temp contract runs out, and then let go right beforehand. The result is a never ending stream of untrained employees trying to adapt to a new position. The line i was testing (pill dispenser machines for walgreens pharmacies) had so many problems it was a miracle we shipped any machines at all.
On a slightly related note, those pill machines seemed rather unsafe to me. They had a robotic arm such the pills out of a hopper through a plastic tube and shoot them into a waiting pill bottle. While it sounds like a nice idea in principle, the longer i worked there the more i thought about how real pills wouldnt be as resistant to breaking up or just rubbing in the tube and leaving drug residue all on the insides as the plastic fake pills we tested with. The risk for harmful interactions from contamination made me resolve to never get my prescriptions filled at walgreens anymore.
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Posting anonymously because I've had previous run-ins with LEGO's lawyers.
You mean you lie about Lego and they try to sue you for libel?
That certainly adds to your credibility.
OK, I don't speak Dutch, but...
The competing companies will even benefit from free advertising since Lego company advertising will effectively promote companies that simply call their product Legos.
Is the decision about the *shape* of the toys, or the *name* of the toys?
Forget cheap plastic. What about titanium? Alunium? Stainless steel?
That will probably happen in a few years. First, the TBAA (Toy Brick Association of America) will have to bribe the government to pass new trademark laws protecting the sanctity of Lego Bricks. Next they can build clout by suing any children found interlocking Lego bricks with other brands, mostly in John Doe cases, with mass subpoenas sent to preschools and day care centers in effort to discover the identities of potential offenders.
After that action *totally* works, the TBAA can then get the US Congress to put pressures on the Europeans to bring their trademark laws "up to date", and allow Lego to continue bringing in the revenue they deserve.
If it works as well as it did for the RIAA and MPAA, we should have open source bricks before too long. :)
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It is exaggerated IMHO. 650 basic pieces including wheels and a base and windows and such for $30 in the US... that's not too bad, especially since you know the quality is going to be top-notch. If you don't want all the do-dads and just want a plain rectangular based block assortment, that's only $25 for 650 pieces.
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I can guarantee you that quality from one supplier who has an exclusive license costs a lot more money than quality amongst competition from different suppliers.
They thought that when they opened the energy, telecom, train and many other markets.
Judging from today's perspective, it turns out that the telecom market is the only one where something along the lines of what was promised has actually happened. In most of the other markets, quality has dropped, prices have gone up. Whoops, the exact opposite of what should have happened.
Why? Two reasons.
One, it turns out the former state-owned monopolies did actually take in monopoly rent, but since they had no compulsion to make profit, they spent it again and often on good things, such as quality, employee satisfaction and research. All things that make the product better.
Two, the promised "market competition" doesn't happen in markets that naturally favour monopolies or oligopolies. Any market with huge entry costs works like that, because after consolidation few players ever enter the market again. Energy market is the prime example here.
So, in other words, no, competition alone will not necessarily make the product any cheaper nor better.
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Pfft. Look through any sizable collection of legos belonging to someone under, say, age 8.
Give me a nickle for every brick with teeth marks on it.
According to one interview I read somewhere, the most expensive Lego parts to manufacture are the mini-figs. I believe they cost something like a little over $1 US to manufacture.
Lego uses very precise molds. It is the key to the Lego bricks' distinctiveness, and why they fit well. Old molds are destroyed by burying them in the concrete foundation of buildings. They also have several different kinds of plastic to create different specialized bricks and pieces. People can replicate the design of the bricks and sell them cheaper, but I don't think they can replicate the manufacturing process and not be forced to raise prices.
I have yet to read TFA (go figure), but I'm guessing this has something to do with Lego trying to maintain IP protection on their brick design by claiming that their trademarked logo is on the stud, and therefore the idea of a stud is trademarked as well.
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[i]According to one interview I read somewhere, the most expensive Lego parts to manufacture are the mini-figs. I believe they cost something like a little over $1 US to manufacture.[/i]
I believe it, but it's still mind boggling that, after all this time, despite how precise their molds are, that it costs so much for a molded piece of plastic.
Even if the plastic is super high quality, you're only getting a couple of grams of it.
How long does it take for a high quality mold to require replacement when it's just molding plastic? I don't know.
Still, it seems to me that technological advances should make it cheaper for them to be able to produce those parts... ultimately it's still just molded plastic.
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I totally agree. We recently "polluted" my son's Lego collection with MegaBlocks, and after several tearful episodes ("They won't stick together!" "They don't fit!") have decided to root this evil from our house. They're a scourge.
Once a week my son goes and plays at my parents house for a few hours. The Brio trains from when I was a kid still work great, but the cheap knock off add on parts my parents bought to have more for him are crap... they had to find an affordable retailer online to get more stuff. As he's moving past the real little kid blocks and into Duplo, the fact that everything from my childhood held up is remarkable.
However, just about everything that we buy on the market at this point, is cheap and crappy. It's gotten to the point that we just buy whatever is cheapest at Walmart, because trying to get the higher end stuff isn't higher end, just more expensive. Why pay twice as much for the same falling apart plastic junk from the same factories in China? After churning through $100+ car seats, we not just get the $40 ones at Walmart, and when they go, we replace them. I have two kids, 18 months apart, and just about none of the stuff gets handed down because EVERYTHING on the market is poorly made.
It's easy to blame consumers, but a lot is a function of smaller family sizes. The generation born in the 70s was born when average family sizes were over 2.5 kids, so 2-3 was normal, and plenty of families of 4-5 existed. Family sizes for middle class families (the ones that buy this stuff) are probably under 1.5 right now... If most of your customers won't have a second kid, why would they pay more for quality, it's not getting passed down.
America just isn't child friendly anymore... and we have fewer kids in each family... can't put 3 kids in a normal sized sedan, need either a giant sedan, SUV, or minivan with a third kid, and kids under 13 aren't supposed to ride up front... WTF? The sedan was the quintessential family car... now a mom running small carpool with 4 kids in her car needs a minivan because you can't put one up front and 3 in the back, something that was routine for us growing up as kids.
Alex