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LEGO® Launches Battle Over Trademark
Nov. 3, 2009 -Press Association/UKPA-
LEGO, maker of the iconic toy brick, is launching a legal bid to win back its
trademark.
The company was last year stripped of the right to keep the brick’s
three-dimensional 2x4 shape as its EU trademark, after a challenge from rival
toy maker Mega Brands, which markets Mega Bloks.
The EU’s trademark office, OHIM, granted LEGO the legal right to the shape in
1999, but then agreed with Mega Bloks’ case that a brick was a functional,
technical shape which could not be owned by any one company.
LEGO has already lost one courtroom bid to win the rights back, and its lawyers
return to the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg again on Tuesday.
They will claim that LEGO brick design contains characteristics that set it
apart from others - such as the design and size of the studs on top of the
bricks.
The company is challenging the previous OHIM decision, upheld by judges, that
functional shapes, such as a brick or any other “industrial design” must be
excluded from trade mark protection.
Otherwise, the court argued, one company would have a monopoly on a basic shape
which could be deemed to be “necessary to obtain a technical result”
LEGO claims that the company’s competitors do not need to copy the shape of the
LEGO brick to achieve the same “technical solution”, and that most consumers
identify their studded brick as the company’s brand.
The Danish toymaker’s basic red plastic LEGO 2x4 brick was literally the
building block for a global toy industry success.
UKPA
Dexigner website
-end of report-
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: LEGO® Launches Battle Over Trademark
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| (...) I suggest that LEGO design a new brick to achieve the same "technical solution." Otherwise, this sounds like another in a long string of fairly open-and-shut cases along these lines. Dave! (15 years ago, 14-Nov-09, to lugnet.mediawatch, FTX)
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