Subject:
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LEGO® Group wins lawsuit in Finland
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.mediawatch
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Followup-To:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Fri, 6 May 2005 02:39:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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1802 times
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LEGO® Group wins lawsuit in Finland
May 4, 2005
Main link with pictures
http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asppage=pressdetail&contentid=14693&countrycode=2057
The LEGO Group has recently won a court action in the Finnish Market Court
against Biltema Suomi Oy, a sales company. The action concerned Biltema’s sale
and marketing of copies of LEGO products under the Coko trademark.
The judgment prohibits Biltema Finland from marketing and selling copy products
which are identical or very similar to LEGO bricks unless the very appearance of
those copies is changed to distinguish them from the LEGO bricks, and Biltema
was ordered to compensate the legal costs of the LEGO Group. A possible claim
for compensation may be filed in a local District Court. So this point still
remains to be settled.
As a result of the Market Court judgment, Biltema is not permitted to sell Coko
bricks in Finland unless they are modified so that they can no longer be
mistaken for LEGO bricks The judgment extends, for all practical purposes, to a
sales ban.. The Market Court also found that Biltema had abused the goodwill of
the LEGO Group while creating the risk of confusion on the commercial origin in
respect of the Coko products, the quality of which was considered inferior to
that of the original LEGO products.
The Finnish Supreme Court has previously rendered a decision on parts of this
case, and concluded that the concept of marketing should not be construed too
narrowly and should, in particular, also include the offering for sale of
products in addition to more active marketing actions. The LEGO case is one of
the first rulings by the Finnish Market Court that have ever been appealed to
the Supreme Court. The appeal by the LEGO Group thereby succeeded in changing
the long standing Finnish Market Court practice of ruling only on the marketing
of copy products – not the actual sale.
“The ruling of the Finnish Market Court is another important result of our
efforts to counteract copy products which mislead consumers,” says Henrik G.
Jacobsen, Corporate Counsel at the LEGO Group. “The Finnish ruling means that
the case law on unfair competition in Finland is now on a par with that of the
other Nordic countries,” he says. “But in the long term it is an unsatisfactory
state of affairs for the safety of European consumers and the protection of the
rightholders that still today such a difference exists in EU Member States in
the application of unfair competition law protection. In effect, it means that a
company can win a case in several EU member states on one day – and lose an
identical case in a neighbouring member state the next.”
The successful ruling in Finland is the third of four lawsuits that the LEGO
Group has brought against Biltema in the Nordic countries. In Sweden the LEGO
Group won a corresponding case in October last year, and in Norway the case
against Biltema was won in September 2003. An action against Biltema in Denmark
is expected to be heard later this month.
In December 2003 the LEGO Group won its action against the Chinese manufacturer
of Coko products at The Beijing High People’s Court. Coko was ordered to
surrender moulds to the court, which then arranged for their destruction. In
addition, the offending company had to publish an official apology in a national
Chinese daily newspaper and pay a sum in compensation to the LEGO Group.
-end of report-
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