Hasta La Gadget!

The Lego brick is one of the most iconic products in the toy industry–not iconic enough, however, for the company to score the trademark rights to the design. Not in the European Union, at least. A Luxembourg-based judge upheld a 2008 ruling, which struck down Lego’s trademark claims.

Lego argued that, without the trademark, the door is wide open for copycat products. “It is naturally a matter of concern to us that use of the brick by others can dilute the trademark,” Lego intellectual property executive Peter Kjaer said of the ruling. “But the worst aspect is that consumers will be misled.”

Lawyers on the other side of the argument, meanwhile, argued that the shape could not be trademark as it “precluded people from using the same technical function,” meaning that owning the trademark to the snapping pegs would prohibit other from creating a product that had the same feature.

“The court effectively took the view that all the essential characteristics of the Lego brick did perform a technical function–to enable bricks to be connected and stacked–even if other minor features did not, and this precluded registration,” the lawyer, Shireen Peermohamed, explained.

The court agreed, stating that such a trademark over the “technical solution” would essentially constitute a monopoly.