Subject:
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Re: Can we help?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.dear-lego
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Date:
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Mon, 1 Nov 2004 19:42:17 GMT
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Viewed:
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3299 times
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In lugnet.dear-lego, Bryan Wong wrote:
> If LEGO moves production to China, expect leaks of set designs,
Already happens. Sometimes people get unauthorized access to dealer catalogs
(those which local stores use to order stock from), and other times people sneak
photos at early toy shows that are not supposed to be open to the press (like
the one in Japan, which happens shortly before the NY Toy Fair).
> the copying of sets by clone bricks, etc. to happen on a regular basis.
Already happens. Every year in Hong Kong, the LEGO Company lawyers have to
scour the booths and have various displays confiscated.
> The legal department will have their hands full!
They've got a good team, but let's not kid ourselves and pretend that just
because they can get ripoffs kicked out of a toy show and confiscate the samples
that they are actually preventing all of those companies from selling those same
products. I mean, it's China. The market won't fully support the sale of
authentic LEGO product, so there are always going to be cheap ripoffs available,
whether the business dealings take place openly or in backroom deals.
> Just look at all the Hollywood films that are available in China shortly
> after their theatrical release!
Now that's a completely different situation. All you need to be able to pull
that off is a small camcorder, a DVD burner, and a stack of blank DVDs. You
could run an operation like that out of a moderately sized closet. Ripping of
LEGO set designs still requires a full-size factory, and a means of producing
tooling. The big difference I expect to see from this is that they'll be able
to rip off newer set designs than before, since they'll potentially have access
to stuff that hasn't been released yet, whereas before they were mostly limited
to copying older set designs where they could just go to the store and buy a
copy to, er, copy.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Can we help?
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| (...) I guess the point I was trying to make is that if TLG moved production to China, they would be spending more resources on combating theft of intellectual property than what they are currently used to. I am not an economics major, but moving to (...) (20 years ago, 1-Nov-04, to lugnet.dear-lego)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Can we help?
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| (...) Just a word of warning, and pointing out the obvious: If LEGO moves production to China, expect leaks of set designs, the copying of sets by clone bricks, etc. to happen on a regular basis. The legal department will have their hands full! Just (...) (20 years ago, 1-Nov-04, to lugnet.dear-lego)
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