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Subject: 
Re: LEGO® looses a court decision in Germany
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:57:22 GMT
Viewed: 
1214 times
  
In lugnet.mediawatch, Abner Finley wrote:
'The trademark issue is even more intriguing as the
original building block design was patented in 1947 by Harry Fisher Page, a
child psychologist in Britain (who was never related to LEGO at any time).'

Bzzt! From Best Lock's own site:
http://www.best-lock.com/new/page.html

"Mr. Page passed on a drawing and samples of his blocks to the Christiansens in
Denmark"

Of course, I don't think Page gave Lego any "official" rights to the brick,
since Lego settled out-of-court in 1981, paying off Page's company. But from the
sounds of it, it was more of a friendly exchange of ideas, which Lego
capitalized on. IIRC I remember also reading some speculation about the odd
coincidence that Lego released the stud-and-tube system in 1958, which is the
year after Page died.

Anyway, dunno what this case will mean for Lego. Cheaper prices for German
AFOL's? Even less profit for Lego? How quickly will German merchandisers start
buying Best-Lock and MB products?

DaveE



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