As for why, my bet is to prevent "counterfeit" (as Lego would call them) lego parts being shipped by vendors. They target low-income countries, as it is profitable there to import China-made bricks and sell them on Bricklink to make a living.
As a background, there are plenty of chinese lego alternatives, operating mostly legally in the west as the lego patent has expired long ago. Brands such as Mouldking, Cobi, Bluebrixx, CaDa, etc. are available here in Germany even in retail stores and online, and it is perfectly legal to sell "alternative" bricks. Cobi itself manufactures all of its part in the EU (mostly Poland) and creates original designs (mostly War-themed models such as tanks, fighting jets etc. as Lego does not do those).
IIRC lego had two actual patents: the basic brick, and the classic figure. The brick is expired while the figure isn't. Hence you can find "alternate" bricks, but not figures. They do own a shitload of trademarks, and aren't afraid to enforce them (which they legally must or they risk losing the TM).
Fun story: my wife ordered a couple of those "alternate" sets, and none inflicted on Legos patent nor TM (no lego branding, not a copy of a lego set, etc). The Swedish customs acted on their own (baffling to me) and stopped the package, sent her a letter in stark wording to accept forfeit. She challenged this, then Lego's lawyers got in contact with us and, using the figure patent, claimed this was a copy and we should forfeit or they would sue her. Very harsh letter, very stark wording.
Left a very bad taste in my mouth, haven't bought any Lego (or alternatives either) since.
There is jazz improvisation handbook "Harmony with Lego Bricks" written in the 1980's by Conrad Cork in the UK. It's pretty niche. Conrad approached Lego at the time and they gave him permission to use the Lego name. It's written "LEGO(R)" on the cover. Those were more innocent times I guess. (edited for a typo)
Surely the minifigure patent has expired? The original patent was in 1979 (design patent 253711: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD253711S/en)
Or are they doing a pharma and have repatented a small variation, or the European equivalent is still going?
Or is it actually trademark that is being enforced here?
The patent expired, but the minifigs is also a EU 3D trademark. This is not possible for the brick which (only) serves a technical function, namely to hold on each other. Trademarks do not expire while in use. Another example for a 3D trademark, also in this US, is the Coca Cola bottle.
[1] https://www.chaillot.com/ip-news/validity-of-3d-trademarks-f...
the minifigure is not patented, but protected by a 3D design mark. design marks don't expire, and attempts to challenge the mark and get it removed so far have not been successful.
LEGO is using design marks to protect all new bricks they create. design marks can just be registered without any review. but they can be challenged, and some of these challenges have been successful.
Interesting, thank you.
These are the designs registered for Lego A/S on the EU eSearch website: https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/owners/154249
I did also see from the daily bulletin, that literally today "Bricklab Holding GmbH" (https://www.northdata.com/BrickLab%20Holding%20GmbH,%20Weinh...) was awarded the registration of a minifigure-like design: https://ibb.co/s96f9sKN
Bulletin for today: https://euipo.europa.eu/copla/bulletin/data/download/ctm/202...
Cobi has own minifig design, imo better looking, more human https://latericius.com/en-eu/blogs/blog/cobi-vs-lego
Is this conjecture or actually done? Bricklink Buyers expect Lego bricks, including the trademark on each stud, so any shop sending anything not produced by the Lego Group, but with the trademark on it, would be sending actual counterfeit products, not third party bricks.
Buying actual Lego bricks produced in whichever Lego factory and reselling them is not counterfeiting.
It is mere conjecture, I have no datapoints to support this. I would assume, since Bricklink sends worldwide, that you would not open a support case when buying a couple of $ worth of parts if they are non-original. The effort of return shippment probably not worth it. I could also imagine that you can buy china-manufactured parts that carry the lego logo.
i highly doubt that. i have never seen a counterfeit lego set with an actual lego logo. even in china that would not be legal. someone would have to specifically target bricklink shops to sell such bricks.
if you get fake bricks you might not open a support case to get the bricks replaced, but you would complain and report that shop. with enough reports coming in someone would look into that. so i feel that this is unlikely to happen. at the worst case it's someone clueless, mixing in alternative brands by accident. but i expect someone doing that intentionally would be shut down quickly by reputation only. i mean, shops get closed simply because they get to many complaints about taking to long to ship.
> i highly doubt that. i have never seen a counterfeit lego set with an actual lego logo
Question: do the legit brick manufacturers equal the quality of Lego? I picked up a Lego-compatible set years ago, and it didn't quite fit with Lego blocks (I'm assuming due to poorer tolerances).
I admit I have no knowledge here, but if 100% compatibility is possible, faking the logo doesn't seem like a high bar. If you were buying fake individual bricks (not sets), how would you even know?
the quality is generally equal, but there is more variety i suppose. what you describe sounds like extremely bad quality. if you can share the brand then maybe someone can give more insights.
producing bricks with a LEGO logo is a low bar. selling them is more difficult. you need to sell a lot of them to make it worth it. in order to sell them at scale on bricklink you would need to target a lot of stores. how would you do that without the storeowners knowing? a single store would not sell enough without being noticed.
I would disagree. Quality is a hit-and-miss. I have some cheap chinese manufactured bricks that are far off the lego quality, and some others which have on-par quality and better color consitency.
yes, but it depends on the brand. there are some brands that have reliably good quality, and some that don't. i have been buying various brands in china for 10 years now and the quality was always decent or good.
> share the brand
Honestly, it was a long time ago, I don't think it would say anything about the quality today. But I think it was MegaBloks.
If a store actually delivers counterfeit bricks, returning them is not relevant. Bricklink stores rely heavily on their reputation, so anyone pulling a stunt like this would have to start over and over again.
> I could also imagine that you can buy china-manufactured parts that carry the lego logo.
It wouldn't gain the manufacturer anything, but cost them in terms of liability. It would also mean they can't sell bricks made with such moulds to any party which very much does not want get into a trademark dispute with the Lego Group. So it is very, very unlikely.
There are plenty of cowboys out there who produce sets which look way too much like Lego sets (boxes and all), and which violate the trademark by having logos which sort of look like the Lego logo if you squint, but bricks with the literal Lego logo on them would blow away any sort of defence based on plausible deniability.
I've become a fan of Cobi.
Our eldest daughter loves airliners and wanted a model of a particular type of plane earlier this year that we could only find as a Cobi model. I've always been a bit wary of Lego-alikes (principally because all of the ones that I saw growing up in the 80s and 90s were kind of crappy), but have no complaints with the quality of Cobi models - excellent instructions too. The cost was probably half, or less, of what a Lego equivalent - if there'd been one available - would have been as well.
Cobi's range of aircraft models is much broader than Lego as well so if you have a loved one who's into "Lego" and planes, they're a real winner. We've just bought our daughter another one of their aircraft models for Christmas.
We got some Cobi set on a ferry cruise a few years back (Cobi 69120 Viking Line) and while kinda neat looking the tolerances/design made it hard to snap in and the decal placement (over edges) really made it a build-once model sadly.
At least there wasn't an horrid chemical smell as when we opened some Chinese figures off Ali-Express (soldier minifigs).
Cobi is more of a model-building company. Their brick-builds are meant to resemble the real-deal just as a plastic model would. Lego (especially Lego Technic) goes deliberately more for a brick-style appearance. Cobi thus creates a lot of custom molded parts to avoid the brick-style look and more of a real-world approximation. I don't think they market creativity, or B-models/custom builds with their products.
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Israel and Greenland are among the banned countries. I'm not sure your explanation makes sense for them.