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 20:31:09 GMT
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Viewed:
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2399 times
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In lugnet.mediawatch, Matthew Jeffery wrote:
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In lugnet.mediawatch, Erik Olson wrote:
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Saw this scroll by on Bloomberg:
Mega Bloks Confirms Cancellation of Lego Shape Mark by European Union
Trademark Office
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-02-2004/0002223318
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Hey all, back from a long lurk and I see this!
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 ago. The problem I see here is that if Megabloks go too far
with this, they will start getting their products confused for LEGO’s,
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This won’t likely happen. Previous lawsuits have ruled that MEGABLOKS has erred
in marketing its product in a way that can confuse the buyer into thinking that
MEGABLOKS are affiliated with or endorsed by LEGO. Therefore, for close to a
decade, MEGABLOKS has been very careful to imply no LEGO endorsement, and LEGO
isn’t even mentioned in the packaging.
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(Now that I own some Megabloks, I can say whatever I want) that is soft and
hard to keep together.
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Just for my own curiosity, would you mind indicating which set you own? As a
fan of that brand, I try to keep informal track of people’s complaints to see
how they mesh with my own experience.
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I can imagine the complaint call:
“Hello, Megabloks customer service, how can I help you?”
“I bought this kit for my son/daughter, thinking it was LEGO, but when they
opened it, they noticed that the parts were poor quality compared to LEGO,
and they fall apart really easily. Is there a way to get a refund or an
exchange for the real thing?”
“I’m sorry, we can’t do that.”
“Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll certainly be buying less
of your product in the future!”
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To be fair, though, that doesn’t seem like much of a backlash. I mean, if the
parent wouldn’t have knowingly bought the MEGABLOKS set in the first place, then
it doesn’t harm MEGABLOKS if the parent buys no additional sets thereafter.
Sure, she can complain to other would-be purchasers, but that’s always been the
case.
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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...
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Now that is a little weird. I guess it can be justified because the “about
MEGABLOKS” info came from the website, and perhaps no one at LEGO.com wanted to
go on record regarding the article. Further, the article isn’t intended as a
compare-for-yourself admonition.
Still, a link to the two parties’ websites would probably have seemed more
even-handed.
Dave!
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