Euro judges strip Lego brick of trademark status
The Lego brick, one of the most instantly-recognised toys in the world, was stripped of its trademark status by European judges today.
The Danish toymaker’s basic red plastic Lego 2x4 brick was literally the building block for a global toy industry success.
And the brick’s three-dimensional 2x4 shape was registered as an EU trademark in 1999.
But then rival maker Mega Brands, which markets Mega Bloks, successfully appealed to the EU’s trademark office OHIM to cancel Lego’s trademark. The OHIM agreed that a brick was a functional, technical shape which could not be trademarked by any one company.
Today the European Court of First Instance agreed, rejecting Lego’s application for its trademark back.
Lego challenged the idea that functional shapes, such as a brick or any other “industrial design” were necessarily excluded from trade mark protection.
Lego, claimed the company’s lawyers, contained characteristics that set it apart such as the design and size of the studs on top of the bricks.
But the judges today ruled that keeping the Lego trademark on the basic brick design created a monopoly on what amounted to a functional shape which was “necessary to obtain a technical result”. They rejected Lego’s claim that the company’s competitors did not need to copy the shape of the Lego brick to achieve the same “technical solution”.
Lego had submitted details of surveys showing that most consumers identified the plastic red brick with studs on top as the company’s brand, and that consumer perception had to be taken into consideration when the judges looked at “the essential characteristics of the shape at issue”.
But the judges ruled that consumer perception was not relevant to an analysis of the functionality of the design and that, if it was purely functional, the functional shape itself had to be available to everyone.
