Subject:
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Re: Trademark defense doesn't work vs Mega Bloks
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.mediawatch, lugnet.general
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Date:
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Wed, 4 Aug 2004 22:28:59 GMT
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Viewed:
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2537 times
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In lugnet.mediawatch, David Eaton wrote:
> Uh-- did they really 'allow' it to expire? I was under the impression that
> the patent lasted 20 years, then 'tough noogies'.
That's only because Mickey Mouse can't be patented. If he could, you'd be able
to renew patents by now. Disney would have seen to it.
> I was interested to see some of the other imitators from before 1978, though:
Since TLC only owned the patent on the fully tubed variety, and none of those
clones seems to use a perfectly identical interior design, I'm betting they were
all trying to skirt around the patent by using slightly different designs. The
split-bottom tubes are similar enough that it's clearly an attempt to do just
that, but the X-bottomed style could be legitimately claimed to have been
developed independantly, and the version with the solid end walls looks pretty
hard to tie back to the original tubed design.
> Kinda cool. But even before that, with Lego's predacessors like KiddieCraft,
> MiniBrix, etc, it seems like nobody could make the idea of interlocking
> bricks take off like Lego did.
Maybe nobody ever really tried to make it as big as TLC did. They even treated
it as a minor line of their toy company for a few decades.
> Seems like Godtfred and maybe even Kjeld were the ones responsible for
> making Lego a real hit.
It's hard to say for sure. There were two major changes in the 50's that opened
the door for the enormous success that was seen later, and Ole Kirk was still in
charge of the company at that time...but one of them, at least, has been
directly credited to Godtfred, and the other happened the same year Ole Kirk
died, so it's hard to say how much he was involved in that.
The first change was the introduction of the "10 characteristics" (Unlimited
play potential; For girls and for boys; Fun for every age; Year-round play;
Healthy and quiet play; Long hours of play; Imagination, creativity,
development; The more LEGO elements, the greater the value; Extra sets
available; Quality in every detail). Godtfred came up with that list after a
toy buyer complained to him that no company offered a "comprehensive toy
system", and only after that list was compiled did they settle on the Automatic
Binding Bricks as being the one product that clearly fit all of those
characteristics. Without that set of clearly defined characteristics, The LEGO
Company might never have bet their money on LEGO bricks.
The second change was the development of the tubed interior, which increased
sales enough that within only a couple of years, they were the most popular toy
in Europe. And without that, they probably would have lost the bet.
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