MediaWatch : 1539


MediaWatch / 1539	1538 \| 1540

Subject:	Re: Trademark defense doesn't work vs Mega Bloks
Newsgroups:	lugnet.mediawatch, lugnet.general
Date:	Wed, 4 Aug 2004 15:40:13 GMT
Viewed:	2442 times

In lugnet.mediawatch, Matthew Jeffery wrote:

The other problem I see here has little relation to the Megabloks issue and a lot to do with the media (hence the x-posting) This website is supposedly a news site, i.e, an impartial participant here to deliver news. This report seems extremely biased to me - and not because of the content, it is simply because of the blatant advertising at the bottom of the page for Megabloks. I see no mention of Lego, and no links so that comparisons can be made by the consumer. Hmmmmmmmm...

Impartial? Well, sort of, but not in the way that you seem to think. It’s called PRNewswire. PR, as in Press Release or Press Relations. This appears to be a website where various corporations can upload their press releases for various news agencies to pick up. At the bottom it even says “Issuers of news releases and not PR Newswire are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content.” The “article” in question was written by MB employees, which is why they can get away with pumping their product as “high quality” and linking back to their own website, while not saying anything good about TLC. Impartiality only exists by virtue that an opposing view can be posted by any competing company. In this case, TLC could post a negatively worded version of the same basic statement, if they feel like it.

I was interested, though, to hear that the original LEGO brick design was borrowed from someone else. Still, the tubes inside the 2x4 brick were a LEGO-patented design, and that’s probably the design that’s used by clone companies. Then again, the top of the LEGO brick is what people remember, not the inside. You could probably snap a photo of the bottom and cut the recognition factor by at least half.

Message has 1 Reply:

		Re: Trademark defense doesn't work vs Mega Bloks
(...) Goodness. I can think of close to a dozen brands that use some variation of the tubes-and-studs clutch system, so recognition could definitely be a problem! (URL) This item> has been mentioned previously on LUGNET, but it seems relevant to (...) (20 years ago, 4-Aug-04, to lugnet.mediawatch, lugnet.general, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:

		Re: Trademark defense doesn't work vs Mega Bloks
(...) Well, that's fair enough. The LEGO trademark on the standard brick must have expired years ago, it's only the fact that the community automatically associates said brick design with LEGO that prevented Megabloks taking it for themselves ages (...) (20 years ago, 4-Aug-04, to lugnet.mediawatch, lugnet.general, FTX)

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