BootLego

November 17, 2005 10:31 AM

In a landmark decision that is believed to have wide-ranging implications for trademark law, the Supreme Court of Canada today dismissed Lego's claim against Montreal-based rival Mega Bloks.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium (42 comments total)

damn hippies
posted by tiamat at 10:34 AM on November 17, 2005

Good for them. Were they trying to trademark the shape?

That would be like Michelin trying to trademark the 'round tube of rubber' tire shape and preventing anyone from making tires forever.

Clearly, Lego blocks might have been protected via patent, which would have expired long ago.
posted by delmoi at 10:37 AM on November 17, 2005

That Lego is a Danish company has nothing to do with it...
posted by Artw at 10:45 AM on November 17, 2005

Mega Blocks are cheap plastic crap. and they're goofy-looking too.
posted by atlatl at 10:46 AM on November 17, 2005

The brightly-coloured toy blocks are similar in design. Mega Bloks tend to be larger, and do not link with Lego blocks.

I agree with the decision, but I think it's kind of scummy that the blocks look so similar, yet aren't compatible. I assume that's intentional, in order to force people into choosing one or the other?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 10:51 AM on November 17, 2005

yaaaaaaaay cheap legos soon!

according to TFA, the patent had expired, and they were claiming that the dimensions of the product itself is a trademark.
posted by rxrfrx at 10:52 AM on November 17, 2005

I agree with the decision, but I think it's kind of scummy that the blocks look so similar, yet aren't compatible. I assume that's intentional, in order to force people into choosing one or the other?

After this ruling, wouldn't Mega Bloks want to start making compatible blocks? Then people could use their old, sturdy, cool-looking expensive Lego parts with cheaper Mega stuff. It's like how model trains have common gauges.
posted by rxrfrx at 10:53 AM on November 17, 2005

MegaBlocks are the gateway through which small children learn to love Legos. You start them on the big, clunky, blocks they can't choke on, then when they're older and want to make cooler things, you break out the Legos.
posted by jrossi4r at 10:56 AM on November 17, 2005

I have a 16month old, and megabloks were the only ones available for his age. Does Lego even make stuff for the under 2 crowd?
posted by MrMulan at 10:56 AM on November 17, 2005

I have a 16month old, and megabloks were the only ones available for his age. Does Lego even make stuff for the under 2 crowd

You need to look at Duplo
posted by smcniven at 11:02 AM on November 17, 2005

Personally I just wish MegaBloks were better made. The one peg ones especially come undone far too easily. Hard to teach your kid how to put things together if they don't *stay* together.
posted by Zinger at 11:07 AM on November 17, 2005

this is great stuff.
posted by j-urb at 11:11 AM on November 17, 2005

You need to look at Duplo

Duplo were what got me started, and they weren't delightfully chewy the way megablocks are, but they did have kind of sharp edges on them. If I had a kid I'd probably give him* megablocks first.

* everyone knows girls just end up playing house with the lego men, which is a waste. *ducks*
posted by Space Coyote at 11:19 AM on November 17, 2005

Lego is far superior. When I was a kid, I also owned some imitation blocks that were compatable. I had to learn to recognize and avoid them, because they just didn't work nearly as well.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 11:23 AM on November 17, 2005

I have recently increased not only my love for Legos, but my hatred for how #%@%# expensive they are. But I'll probably always buy Legos (for their quality) for my daughters ('cuz they have to learn how to build houses somewhere, so they can become famous architects...).
posted by artifarce at 11:26 AM on November 17, 2005

But can you eat them?
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:28 AM on November 17, 2005

Mega Block should immediately stop its illego business practices.
posted by nervousfritz at 11:29 AM on November 17, 2005

Megas are a gateway block? Never knew that. Typical lefty Canadians...
posted by scheptech at 11:30 AM on November 17, 2005

I have recently increased not only my love for Legos, but my hatred for how #%@%# expensive they are.

Someone's has to pay for their lawyers...
posted by sexymofo at 11:30 AM on November 17, 2005

artifarce writes "but my hatred for how #%@%# expensive they are."

I'd love to get together a significant collection of the original space themed lego pieces for my daughter [1] but holy cricky they apparently are collector items now.

[1] Well and for me too, I was too poor growing up to have any but one of the neighbours had a collection that would be worth thousands of dollars today.
posted by Mitheral at 11:37 AM on November 17, 2005

I wish we could get a little bit of that good sense south of the border.
posted by OmieWise at 11:38 AM on November 17, 2005

I'm all for market stratification, as long as it leads to chrome-plated blocks, or dare I say it... Solid gold blocks. Then I will be ready to build my life-size mansion of Legoish blocks.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:51 AM on November 17, 2005

Does this mean Matt can liscense "Metablocks" ?
:P
posted by Radio7 at 11:54 AM on November 17, 2005

Growing up, I made my parents spend thousands of dollars on Legos. I can remember making a vault type piggy bank with a working combination, and taking a phone apart, and re-making it out of legos. It worked great.

I ended up giving them all away to a friend's kid. That was a stupid move.
posted by Balisong at 12:02 PM on November 17, 2005

i still find little pieces here and there from my old collection. it wasn't a collection so much as it was a gigantic rubbermaid 10 gallon tub full of everything lego-related i'd ever owned.

no idea where the hell it went...
posted by wakko at 12:19 PM on November 17, 2005

If you already had a Lego house, would the Canadian Supreme Court let me knock it down and build a bigger one out of Meta Bloks for the extra tax revenue?
posted by Armitage Shanks at 12:21 PM on November 17, 2005

Meta Bloks

Damn. I hate when that happens.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 12:24 PM on November 17, 2005

Whilst I personally prefer LEGO for building giant dinosaur models for the boy he does like the Mega Bloks because they have ready made castles and Great Big Flappy-Wing Dragons which he has christened "Jon" and "Elisabeth".

God bless childish naming conventions.
posted by longbaugh at 12:26 PM on November 17, 2005

I'd love to get together a significant collection of the original space themed lego pieces for my daughter [1] but holy cricky they apparently are collector items now.

I have a big-ass Rubbermaid bin in my attic filled with thousands of my old bricks, most of which are original space and town sets. My son is three now, he loves his Duplo, and as soon as he's old enough to appreciate them I plan on taking him up to the attic and ceremoniously handing over the bricks to him.

He'll probably hate them because they're not Harry Potter or Star Wars themed.

Also, a lot of them are scratched up from hours and hours of demolition derbies with my brothers.
posted by bondcliff at 12:27 PM on November 17, 2005

Space Coyote writes "Duplo were what got me started, and they weren't delightfully chewy the way megablocks are, but they did have kind of sharp edges on them. If I had a kid I'd probably give him* megablocks first."

The thing with Duplo is that they are compatible with the higher age sets, so you don't waste money on something the kid will throw away later on - the later sets build on the earlier ones. I think my 14 yo still has all his Lego buckets from Duplo on.
posted by nkyad at 12:55 PM on November 17, 2005

Not sure exactly what was at stake here. Here is what I do know, though:

Lego part definitions are covered by patents, which expire after ~15 years. This explains in part why they keep coming up with new pieces.

The real Lego trade secret is in the manufacturing process. The blueprints for the older parts are available, but no one has managed to replicate them with the same quality at the same price.

Another angle to consider is that Lego is a private-owned company, while Megabloks is not.

So while the decision above seems "right", competition in this case ain't bringing higher quality with it. Incidentally, Lego is actually quite reasonable with the use of their intellectual property, at least when it comes to people who use their products.

As for buying very cheap bulk Lego, look for "pile of legos" (that's right, misspelled) on ebay. The only drawback of the ABS plastic used in lego parts is that is catches smells easily. But it is also easily washable (do not use hot water!). Other than that, old parts will work just as well as new.

Unopened rare sets can be fairly valuable (one of the extremely moronic business decisions of Lego is to have a fixed product shelf life of 3 years, or so the fans claim).

Lego seriously kicks ass in many, many, many ways (think "cutting and pasting" ... in the 1940s).

Best of the Lego Web
posted by magullo at 1:35 PM on November 17, 2005

You need to look at Duplo

Duplo is for 2+ according the web site you linked to. They have sharp edges as others have noticed. What you need for babies is Duplo Baby.
posted by duck at 2:13 PM on November 17, 2005

I have a 16month old, and megabloks were the only ones available for his age. Does Lego even make stuff for the under 2 crowd

You need to look at Duplo

And if Duplo is too sophisticated for you, you can get your kids hooked even earlier with the super-size Quatro (forward-compatible with Duplo, of course, which makes them indirectly forward-compatible with Lego).

If even that's too much for your kiddo to handle, you can always spring for Lego Baby (that's Primo for those of you outside of North America). Unfortunately, for forward-compatibility with these, you'll need to special-order the Primo/Duplo converter bricks (set 5022).

Naturally, once you've progressed from Primo to Quatro to Duplo to Lego, you'll want to move on to Lego Technic, which uses advanced mechanical parts, pneumatics, hydraulics, electronics, and unique connectors, but which is of, course, completely backward-compatible with regular Lego.

If you find yourself a middle-aged AFOL and, by some miracle, you still have some money left, and you still cling to the sad belief that you can fill the gaping chasm in your soul with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, you can always move on to the programmable stylings of Mindstorms Lego robotics, Lego model Trains, or the Ultimate Collector Series!!!


[sigh]
posted by designbot at 2:18 PM on November 17, 2005

I thought Megabloks were made from cheaper PVC plastic, while LEGO blocks were made from ABS. Is that correct?
posted by squink at 2:45 PM on November 17, 2005

Mega Blocks are definitely of lower quality. We bought Mega Blocks for our kids because they're softer and don't hurt as much when you step on them. Try walking barefeet across a floor littered with Duplos and you'll know what I mean.

I think the ruling is good news. Lego makes a great product, but competition is always better. Lego has been amply rewarded for developing their wonderful toy, and it's time to let others develop compatible sets. Lego can still keep their manufacturing process a secret. Let them compete on quality, not compatibility.
posted by Loudmax at 3:12 PM on November 17, 2005

But in a move that Smith said opened the door to numerous Lego knockoffs, the United States Court of Appeals rejected Lego's common law trademark argument. To establish a common law trademark violation, the court said Lego needed to prove that Tyco had imitated an aesthetic quality of Lego's product. The 2 by 4 inch brick, the court said, was a functional component of a building block system and could not be protected by a common law trademark. The United States Supreme Court declined to hear Lego's appeal.

So I think when the Globe says "landmark decision," I think they mean it sets a precedent in Canadian trademark law, not trademark law in general. (Also, those Tyco blocks? Actually pretty good, plus they had weird block shapes that Lego didn't have. Didn't hold together as well as Legos, though.)
posted by chrominance at 3:20 PM on November 17, 2005

smcniven is a veritable genius.
posted by nonmerci at 4:51 PM on November 17, 2005

I hate Megablocks. They always found their way into my giant Rubbermaid bin, and I'd end up frustrated running across them.

Whenever you were building something monochromatic you'd inevitably run out of Lego and have to start including the Megablocks, but they don't fit as well so you'd have to plan where to put them so as to minimize the effect on structural integrity.
posted by maledictory at 4:54 PM on November 17, 2005

The world of Duplo becomes cuter by the SECOND.
posted by nonmerci at 4:54 PM on November 17, 2005

Kind of sad to make something and then find that others can make cheaper ripoffs of your idea. Reminds me of Thermos losing the right to the name they made famous; it was declared generic - thermos.
posted by Cranberry at 5:04 PM on November 17, 2005

Patents are in place to make sure that people can't rip off your idea. Thing is, the patents to Lego have expired (in Canada the last one expired in 1988). Lego has had plenty of protection for their idea.
posted by gwenzel at 6:34 PM on November 17, 2005

bondcliff writes "Also, a lot of them are scratched up from hours and hours of demolition derbies with my brothers."

Heh. We used to build "ATVs" using as many sets of wheels as possible, then ram them into each other until one shattered. The vehicle that remained mobile the longest was declared the winner. We broke a lot of bricks that way (the long Technic beams with the holes in them especially) but we probably learned a lot about cross-bracing and structural integrity.

My dad finally packed up our bag of Lego blocks and sold them for $20 at a yard sale. I'm still kind of mad he did it, we had some crazy parts in there, from original space sets to Lego boats and even the first of the electric train bits. Oh well, what happened in 1992 or so can't be fixed now, can it?
posted by caution live frogs at 6:08 AM on November 18, 2005