Subject:
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Basic Training: Does Selling LEGO® Creations = Trademark Infringement?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.mediawatch
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Date:
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Fri, 20 Aug 2010 08:47:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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45906 times
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This is from Entrepreneur.com website. I thought this might be interesting for
LEGO fans around the world.
Basic Training: Does Selling LEGO® Creations = Trademark Infringement?
Q.: Just wondering if my kids can sell their LEGO creations online? I”m mostly
concerned about the ”LEGO” brand name infringements. That is, if my kids were
to make their own original creations using LEGO® pieces and advertize them on
the internet as, oh I don’t know, “Jake and Joe’s original LEGO® designs” — and
sell the completed creations — without implying their creations are bigger,
better and more valuable than LEGO® … could they do that?
A.: While you can sell LEGO® creations online (check out this artist who has
actually made a “business” out of large-scale LEGO® creations–
http://www.brickartist.com/), you have a number of issues to consider. They
include:
•If your children are under the age of 18, in those states, they cannot open
bank accounts or enter into business relationships. In other words, the
responsibility will fall on your shoulders (or that of another responsible
adult).
•If your children used someone else’s creations (or instructions) as a model for
the designs they created, there could be an issue with copyright infringement.
•There may be truth-in-advertising laws in your state that govern your
description of the designs. If you are going to tout the fact that LEGO® pieces
were used in the construction of the creations, you should divulge whether any
non-LEGO® pieces were used.
•You will also want to be careful about the way you refer to LEGO® in your
description of the creations. It’s one thing to state factually that the
creations were made from LEGO® pieces; it’s quite another to start trading off
the LEGO® name and goodwill by implying that the creations have a greater value,
physical strength, or quality because of the use of LEGO® pieces.
There was a case about this kind of issue not too long ago involving the Tiffany
jewelry store, who was quite upset that its trademark was used to describe
possibly counterfeit merchandise being sold on eBay. The Court said “too bad”:
as long as consumers are not confused about the source of the goods (in your
case, that LEGO® itself is not selling these creations), and there’s no
indication that LEGO® is endorsing what your kids are creating, you can say (if
true) that the creations are original designs made with LEGO® pieces (or words
to that effect).
To make sure that you’re in compliance with all appropriate laws, it would be
worthwhile consulting with a local intellectual property attorney to make sure
that you have all your duck in a row for these online sales.
(This entry was posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 10:55am and is filed
under Basic Training, Intellectual Property. You can follow any responses to
this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from
your own site).
Entrepreneur.com
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