6 ms·

I read this article expecting to hear about potential liability concerns, not IP protection. It seems to me that I remember playing with a toy quite like theirs

I read this article expecting to hear about potential liability concerns, not IP protection. It seems to me that I remember playing with a toy quite like theirs as a child many years ago. Basically cheap poker chips with cuts around the edge so they can connect. So it seems quite unlikely that they'd try to protect that IP, since it probably wasn't their invention in the first place. The designs that they show being copied by others are an interesting problem. I got bored of all the pictures and didn't compare one by one, but it seems like if you were to do a clean room design of a helicopter made of these snowflake chips, it would be legitimate to copy. I would guess they are suing this other company based on the copyright protection of their instruction manuals. Seems hard. I'm quite glad my interests for developing products involve a healthy amount of algorithms rather than just pieces of plastic and instruction manuals. Success breeds competition, and in something like this I doubt it's feasible to compete on quality, only price, which is a hard battle.

molsonhart 6y ago
We didn't invent interlocking plastic discs, but we did improve them and have a patent pending for that improvement. You're right that it is copyright for the helicopter. There is also a trademark infringement claim for "building flakes" vs. Brain Flakes®
- jimmydddd 6y ago
  You can't enforce pending patent applicaition, only an issued patent. Also, as OP notes in the article, actually trying to enforce an issued patent in court is time consuming and expensive. It's also difficult if the copycat is based outside the US. They could just close their doors and open up the next day under another name.
  - pardavis 6y ago
    You are replying to OP who wrote the article. I might have missed it but I don’t think they described any ongoing legal action against this particular copycat.
    - molsonhart 6y ago
      jimmy, believe it or not, this isn't my first rodeo.
      - jimmydddd 6y ago
        @molsonhart. I believe it from your (apparently) successful ip protection biz. :-) I think the disconnect is that I'm a patent guy, and your patent advice seems confused/incomplete/misleading. But this makes sense because your primary protection tools for attacking direct copycats would likely be TM and CR, not utility patents.
    - jimmydddd 6y ago
      Agreed.
  - bobby_bob 6y ago
    Or, make a small improvement to the existing toy themselves or (I imagine quite convincingly) claim they're copying from an earlier, expired patent. It seems expensive and unlikely to prevail in any case.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  What is your improvement? The products look the same, but it can be hard to tell in an image. Without disclosing that you too are a copycat the article is a bit disingenuous. I'm sure many of them went too far and are infringing your trademarks, but I'm equally sure that many others are knockoffs to the exact extent you are.
  - donmcronald 6y ago
    > What is your improvement? The products look the same, but it can be hard to tell in an image. My grandma used to have the old ones when I visited as a kid. It's been a really long time, but I think the originals had deeper slots and the actual chips were a bit thinner. By making the slots shallower and the chips thicker they'd be less prone to bending which prevented them from fitting perfectly perpendicular after a bit of wear.
    - p1necone 6y ago
      That kind of incremental improvement strikes me as the sort of thing that shouldn't be patentable. Can you really patent "changing the physical dimensions a bit so it fits better"?
      - bdowling 6y ago
        > That kind of incremental improvement strikes me as the sort of thing that shouldn't be patentable. It is. Almost all patented inventions are improvements of other inventions. Foundational new technologies are a rare exception. > Can you really patent "changing the physical dimensions a bit so it fits better"? It depends. If the claimed dimensions were new and non-obvious, then maybe. The obviousness analysis would depend on the particular facts of the case and could be quite complex. The questions would probably be ones like, “Would a person having ordinary skill in the art be able to discover the claimed dimensions without undue experimentation?” or “Do the claimed dimensions provide an unexpected result?” or “Does the prior art ‘teach away’ from selecting the claimed dimensions?” So, again, it depends.
      - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Aeolun 6y ago
Lego competes on quality. It’s definitely possible. I wouldn’t ever consider buying any of the Lego knockoffs.
- schappim 6y ago
  I was provided some samples at a STEM Eduation Expo and the lego knockoffs (mostly from China) are surprisingly good now. These days there is no need for a school to buy official lego (non-smart blocks).
- marta_morena_28 6y ago
  Does this have something to do with the patents/copyright Lego holds? How hard can it be to bake a piece of plastic into shape?
  - OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
    Pretty difficult. That would be like saying "How hard can it be to type a program into a computer?". Statistical process control, polymer science, release agent chemistry, die metallurgy / thermal / fluid / mechanical design, etc are large and deep fields. There's probably a better video, but here's the official one about how Lego are made. https://youtu.be/C3oiy9eekzk https://youtu.be/C3oiy9eekzk
    - bnegreve 6y ago
      Actually, the video suggests that the complicated part is not the baking process itself, but the handling of thousands of blocks of different types and colors.
      - OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
        The logistics are obviously challenging too. But their process is a trade secret, so of course the video glosses over it. Having thousands of block types also means solving the challenges I listed thousands of times.
hackerfromthefu 6y ago
That was my first though on seeing the article also .. the chutzpah of writing the article like people are copying them .. when the presenting item is clearly a copy of existing children's toys from before. Then to hear this is a lawyer spruiking IP business .. stopped reading after that honestly
- rkangel 6y ago
  While definitely true, the Amazon screenshots at the bottom of the article are eye opening. They've copied the same shots of the same models. I suppose it makes sense - if you're going to copy a successful product you might as well also copy their (presumably successful) marketing strategy too.
8note 6y ago
I was expecting IP concerns, but that the moment you put something out, or patent it, entrenched companies will immediately sue you to find out everything about your process and copy it, even if they don't have anything similar
londons_explore 6y ago
I agree with you - interlocking discs have been around 50+ years as toys, and the racquet game involving feathers is pretty much a basic badminton shuttle cock (older readers will remember they were originally made of feathers before plastic became common!). While legally you might be able to get away with reinventing old ideas and copyrighting them, it doesn't sit morally well with me!
- Symbiote 6y ago
  I can raise it to 70 years, with a toy from the 1950s, "Dis Kit". I had a mid-20th-century version as a child, which I think was originally my mum's toy when she was a child. They did have a tendency to fall apart — they were probably cut from a sheet rather than injection moulded. The small improvement to make them "click" together seems fine, but it's a bit rich to then rant about others selling similar toys. https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-1950s-toy-set-dis-kit-542193834 https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-1950s-toy-set...
  - molsonhart 6y ago
    Thanks for this, very cool.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> It seems to me that I remember playing with a toy quite like theirs as a child many years ago. Basically cheap poker chips with cuts around the edge so they can connect. The concept definitely isn't new. Back in the 1990s, in Poland we had such "chips with cuts around the edge" added to bags of chips. See e.g. [0] or just search for "Star Wars Tazo". These were themed and intended to be collectibles, but they had these tiny cuts into their sides and we absolutely did use them for small construction projects. -- [0] - https://allegro.pl/oferta/zestaw-15-tazo-tazos-lays-star-wars-gwiezdne-wojny-7818241421 https://allegro.pl/oferta/zestaw-15-tazo-tazos-lays-star-war...
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  I remember those. They were distributed all around the world. Wikipedia lists about 60 countries.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazos
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Nice! I didn't realize they were so widely distributed. From my childhood, I only remember the Star Wars (with incisions) and Pokémon (without) series. There may have been others in Poland after these two, but I've stopped paying attention by then - the desire to spend pocket money on collectibles has then shifted to Magic: The Gathering cards in my cohort.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  We had those too, they were called "Flippo's". They started off as plain disks, later on they added variations - extra large or thick ones, but also ones with the cuts around the edge. So while the company in the article may have copyrights and trademarks and the like, I don't think their mechanism is / has been patented, due to (a very likely) prior art.

molsonhart 6y ago

We didn't invent interlocking plastic discs, but we did improve them and have a patent pending for that improvement. You're right that it is copyright for the helicopter. There is also a trademark infringement claim for "building flakes" vs. Brain Flakes®

jimmydddd 6y ago
You can't enforce pending patent applicaition, only an issued patent. Also, as OP notes in the article, actually trying to enforce an issued patent in court is time consuming and expensive. It's also difficult if the copycat is based outside the US. They could just close their doors and open up the next day under another name.
- pardavis 6y ago
  You are replying to OP who wrote the article. I might have missed it but I don’t think they described any ongoing legal action against this particular copycat.
  - molsonhart 6y ago
    jimmy, believe it or not, this isn't my first rodeo.
    - jimmydddd 6y ago
      @molsonhart. I believe it from your (apparently) successful ip protection biz. :-) I think the disconnect is that I'm a patent guy, and your patent advice seems confused/incomplete/misleading. But this makes sense because your primary protection tools for attacking direct copycats would likely be TM and CR, not utility patents.
  - jimmydddd 6y ago
    Agreed.
- bobby_bob 6y ago
  Or, make a small improvement to the existing toy themselves or (I imagine quite convincingly) claim they're copying from an earlier, expired patent. It seems expensive and unlikely to prevail in any case.
reitzensteinm 6y ago
What is your improvement? The products look the same, but it can be hard to tell in an image. Without disclosing that you too are a copycat the article is a bit disingenuous. I'm sure many of them went too far and are infringing your trademarks, but I'm equally sure that many others are knockoffs to the exact extent you are.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  > What is your improvement? The products look the same, but it can be hard to tell in an image. My grandma used to have the old ones when I visited as a kid. It's been a really long time, but I think the originals had deeper slots and the actual chips were a bit thinner. By making the slots shallower and the chips thicker they'd be less prone to bending which prevented them from fitting perfectly perpendicular after a bit of wear.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    That kind of incremental improvement strikes me as the sort of thing that shouldn't be patentable. Can you really patent "changing the physical dimensions a bit so it fits better"?
    - bdowling 6y ago
      > That kind of incremental improvement strikes me as the sort of thing that shouldn't be patentable. It is. Almost all patented inventions are improvements of other inventions. Foundational new technologies are a rare exception. > Can you really patent "changing the physical dimensions a bit so it fits better"? It depends. If the claimed dimensions were new and non-obvious, then maybe. The obviousness analysis would depend on the particular facts of the case and could be quite complex. The questions would probably be ones like, “Would a person having ordinary skill in the art be able to discover the claimed dimensions without undue experimentation?” or “Do the claimed dimensions provide an unexpected result?” or “Does the prior art ‘teach away’ from selecting the claimed dimensions?” So, again, it depends.
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago

Aeolun 6y ago

Lego competes on quality. It’s definitely possible. I wouldn’t ever consider buying any of the Lego knockoffs.

schappim 6y ago
I was provided some samples at a STEM Eduation Expo and the lego knockoffs (mostly from China) are surprisingly good now. These days there is no need for a school to buy official lego (non-smart blocks).
marta_morena_28 6y ago
Does this have something to do with the patents/copyright Lego holds? How hard can it be to bake a piece of plastic into shape?
- OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
  Pretty difficult. That would be like saying "How hard can it be to type a program into a computer?". Statistical process control, polymer science, release agent chemistry, die metallurgy / thermal / fluid / mechanical design, etc are large and deep fields. There's probably a better video, but here's the official one about how Lego are made. https://youtu.be/C3oiy9eekzk https://youtu.be/C3oiy9eekzk
  - bnegreve 6y ago
    Actually, the video suggests that the complicated part is not the baking process itself, but the handling of thousands of blocks of different types and colors.
    - OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
      The logistics are obviously challenging too. But their process is a trade secret, so of course the video glosses over it. Having thousands of block types also means solving the challenges I listed thousands of times.

hackerfromthefu 6y ago

That was my first though on seeing the article also .. the chutzpah of writing the article like people are copying them .. when the presenting item is clearly a copy of existing children's toys from before. Then to hear this is a lawyer spruiking IP business .. stopped reading after that honestly

rkangel 6y ago
While definitely true, the Amazon screenshots at the bottom of the article are eye opening. They've copied the same shots of the same models. I suppose it makes sense - if you're going to copy a successful product you might as well also copy their (presumably successful) marketing strategy too.

8note 6y ago

I was expecting IP concerns, but that the moment you put something out, or patent it, entrenched companies will immediately sue you to find out everything about your process and copy it, even if they don't have anything similar

londons_explore 6y ago

I agree with you - interlocking discs have been around 50+ years as toys, and the racquet game involving feathers is pretty much a basic badminton shuttle cock (older readers will remember they were originally made of feathers before plastic became common!). While legally you might be able to get away with reinventing old ideas and copyrighting them, it doesn't sit morally well with me!

Symbiote 6y ago
I can raise it to 70 years, with a toy from the 1950s, "Dis Kit". I had a mid-20th-century version as a child, which I think was originally my mum's toy when she was a child. They did have a tendency to fall apart — they were probably cut from a sheet rather than injection moulded. The small improvement to make them "click" together seems fine, but it's a bit rich to then rant about others selling similar toys. https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-1950s-toy-set-dis-kit-542193834 https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-1950s-toy-set...
- molsonhart 6y ago
  Thanks for this, very cool.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

> It seems to me that I remember playing with a toy quite like theirs as a child many years ago. Basically cheap poker chips with cuts around the edge so they can connect. The concept definitely isn't new. Back in the 1990s, in Poland we had such "chips with cuts around the edge" added to bags of chips. See e.g. [0] or just search for "Star Wars Tazo". These were themed and intended to be collectibles, but they had these tiny cuts into their sides and we absolutely did use them for small construction projects. -- [0] - https://allegro.pl/oferta/zestaw-15-tazo-tazos-lays-star-wars-gwiezdne-wojny-7818241421 https://allegro.pl/oferta/zestaw-15-tazo-tazos-lays-star-war...

joshuaissac 6y ago
I remember those. They were distributed all around the world. Wikipedia lists about 60 countries.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazos
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Nice! I didn't realize they were so widely distributed. From my childhood, I only remember the Star Wars (with incisions) and Pokémon (without) series. There may have been others in Poland after these two, but I've stopped paying attention by then - the desire to spend pocket money on collectibles has then shifted to Magic: The Gathering cards in my cohort.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
We had those too, they were called "Flippo's". They started off as plain disks, later on they added variations - extra large or thick ones, but also ones with the cuts around the edge. So while the company in the article may have copyrights and trademarks and the like, I don't think their mechanism is / has been patented, due to (a very likely) prior art.