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If you tried to call yourself Applehero, made videos about electronics, tried to trademark that term and sell merchandise with it, with a logo referencing Apple

If you tried to call yourself Applehero, made videos about electronics, tried to trademark that term and sell merchandise with it, with a logo referencing Apple’s apple... well, you’d end up sued as well. Lego is already close to losing their trademark, they can’t let anything like this slide without risking their IP.

nitrogen 5y ago
A 4x2 press-fit brick is more like using a rounded rectangle in a phone repair shop logo, not "Apple" itself.
- Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
  for the uninitiated: rounded rectangles as a shape for phones is an apple design patent, they sued samsung for that
  - mountainb 5y ago
    They have one for their charger shapes as well among many other things.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    A patent is for products not for logos
    - Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
      Yes design patents are different from trademarks and the apple rounded rectangle phone design is a US design patent while the 2x2 lego brick is registered in the EU as a 3d trademark. Filing for a trademark on a shop name and logo may not be as easily challenged with only an existing design patent and no matching trademark. So yes, the metaphor in the parent is faulty in that small detail when it picks up the metaphor created in the grandparent to better explain what is going on.
- kuschku 5y ago
  First, he called himself Legoheld and then he tried to trademark that name and his logo, specifically an image trademark for any visualization containing a 4x2 or 2x2 brick. Only one company can hold that trademark, Lego currently holds it, so if his trademark claim had succeeded, Lego would have lost theirs.
  - DemocracyFTW 5y ago
    This is wrong, he called himself Held der Steine. To suggest that because a solitary small time shop owner uses a fully generic image of a toy brick will cause the mighty Lego brand to get lost is bizarre. To be sure Lego does not have a copyright, trademark or patent on generic click-to-fit toy bricks and this has been ascertained by a high German court after one decade of strenuous litigation. Lego acts as though they had won that case but the didn't.
    - kuschku 5y ago
      > To be sure Lego does not have a copyright, trademark or patent on generic click-to-fit toy bricks and this has been ascertained by a high German court after one decade of strenuous litigation Lego actually won that case for clothing and merchandise. Only for actual bricks they lost it. He tried to get a trademark on merchandise for his line of clothing, which conflicted with that.
  - la_fayette 5y ago
    He has never called himself "Legoheld"! He had a Logo with a structure similar to a lego brick on it. You can google the image... It would probably be like, if a company uses an apple symbol with their company name on a logo. There are by the way many apple juice producers which use an apple symbol in their logos...
    - randomswede 5y ago
      But apple juice manufacturers are (in the general case) not in the "we manufacture and/or sell electronic products". At which point they would probably end up in an interesting legal tangle.

nitrogen 5y ago

A 4x2 press-fit brick is more like using a rounded rectangle in a phone repair shop logo, not "Apple" itself.

Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
for the uninitiated: rounded rectangles as a shape for phones is an apple design patent, they sued samsung for that
- mountainb 5y ago
  They have one for their charger shapes as well among many other things.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  A patent is for products not for logos
  - Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
    Yes design patents are different from trademarks and the apple rounded rectangle phone design is a US design patent while the 2x2 lego brick is registered in the EU as a 3d trademark. Filing for a trademark on a shop name and logo may not be as easily challenged with only an existing design patent and no matching trademark. So yes, the metaphor in the parent is faulty in that small detail when it picks up the metaphor created in the grandparent to better explain what is going on.
kuschku 5y ago
First, he called himself Legoheld and then he tried to trademark that name and his logo, specifically an image trademark for any visualization containing a 4x2 or 2x2 brick. Only one company can hold that trademark, Lego currently holds it, so if his trademark claim had succeeded, Lego would have lost theirs.
- DemocracyFTW 5y ago
  This is wrong, he called himself Held der Steine. To suggest that because a solitary small time shop owner uses a fully generic image of a toy brick will cause the mighty Lego brand to get lost is bizarre. To be sure Lego does not have a copyright, trademark or patent on generic click-to-fit toy bricks and this has been ascertained by a high German court after one decade of strenuous litigation. Lego acts as though they had won that case but the didn't.
  - kuschku 5y ago
    > To be sure Lego does not have a copyright, trademark or patent on generic click-to-fit toy bricks and this has been ascertained by a high German court after one decade of strenuous litigation Lego actually won that case for clothing and merchandise. Only for actual bricks they lost it. He tried to get a trademark on merchandise for his line of clothing, which conflicted with that.
- la_fayette 5y ago
  He has never called himself "Legoheld"! He had a Logo with a structure similar to a lego brick on it. You can google the image... It would probably be like, if a company uses an apple symbol with their company name on a logo. There are by the way many apple juice producers which use an apple symbol in their logos...
  - randomswede 5y ago
    But apple juice manufacturers are (in the general case) not in the "we manufacture and/or sell electronic products". At which point they would probably end up in an interesting legal tangle.