Did Lego win the lawsuit?

[suffocation]

Hate to play the necromancer, but does anyone have any news about this, maybe from more reliable sources? (The English used in the article is nothing short of execrable).

https://customizeminifiguresintelligence.wordpress.com/2018/08/30/lepin-defeated-in-lego-lawsuit-15-million-yuan-damage-and-unrepentant/

[LegoDW]

That article was dated July 2017.  Pretty sure LEPIN clone sets are still available.

[Johnny1360]

It's over on The Brickfan, there is a link in the Embassy sub-topic, here at EB.  You should be able to easily spot the thread it's in, it is the latest post @suffocation I would post the link here if I knew how. 

Edited August 31, 2018 by Johnny1360

[suffocation]

8 hours ago, LegoDW said:

That article was dated July 2017.  Pretty sure LEPIN clone sets are still available.

It's dated August 30th 2018 and nobody ever mentioned clone sets not being available anymore.

6 hours ago, Johnny1360 said:

It's over on The Brickfan, there is a link in the Embassy sub-topic, here at EB.  You should be able to easily spot the thread it's in, it is the latest post @suffocation I would post the link here if I knew how. 

Thanks, found it!

https://www.thebrickfan.com/lego-wins-lawsuit-against-lepin/

[MAB]

For a while now lepin have been doing knock-offs without using the official LEGO artwork, but continuing to use their numbers and names and fan pictures from the internet. You only need to look on aliexpress and see photos of real LEGO sets that have been taken from the internet to sell the knock-offs. And this doesn't infringe the ruling, since they are not using LEGO's copyright artwork. So while LEGO won, they haven't really won.

[Mylenium]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

So while LEGO won, they haven't really won.

Exactly. Simply because there is nothing to win. LEGO should simply stop wasting their money on expensive lawyers. The returns/ damages barely justify the cost and effort.

Mylenium

[fred67]

1 hour ago, Mylenium said:

Exactly. Simply because there is nothing to win. LEGO should simply stop wasting their money on expensive lawyers. The returns/ damages barely justify the cost and effort.

Mylenium

While I agree with this (and it's probably really unpopular around here to do so), there's two sides to this.  I recall the discussions I'd had years ago about the MPAA and the RIAA going after people "pirating" movies and music.  I firmly believe in IP and copyright and patent protections, and I think when people try to capitalize on the work of others in a way that can financially harm the IP holder, it's really terrible and a big part of what is wrong in the world today - lack of respect for the rights of other people.

In the case of the RIAA and MPAA, all the lawsuits they filed amounted to practically nothing - they spend millions of dollars on lawyers and court fees, and don't recover even a fraction of what they lost.  They also lied about the amount of "harm" that was done to them, but that's a different discussion.  Ultimately they blew a lot of money that comes from guess where?  The consumers are who are legally purchasing the products.

The same thing is happening here - I will never try to justify what LEPIN has done, NEVER, but the people buying LEPIN sets were never likely going to buy the LEGO original in the vast majority of cases.  People buy LEPIN because it's cheap.  LEGO is expensive.  It's that simple.  It's not a justification, and in both the media companies and LEGO cases, I would never suggest that it's OK to buy a bootleg of something - either pay what the IP holder is asking, or don't; this isn't like stealing bread to feed a starving family.

So TLG may succeed in slowing down LEPINs IP infringement, but it won't stop, it won't stop with LEPIN, as other companies are also doing it, and ultimately TLG is spending far more on legal fees than they could hope to recover in the form of people buying their sets instead of knockoffs.

At the same time, TLG is required to defend it's IP or risk losing it.  So there's a fine balance there between spending too much on legal fees, or not defending your IP enough.

It's not a simple question, and there's no simple answer.  It just sucks that there are so many greedy people out there.  I don't buy from these knockoff brands, but I do see original content coming from some of them that is sullied by the other sets they are selling that are blatant rip offs.

[MAB]

It is a bit of a dilemma for them, as it may have backfired somewhat. The various court decisions have shown that other brands cannot use LEGO's pictures, similar logos, similar packaging, brand names such as Ninjago, etc. But it hasn't shown that other manufacturers cannot copy their sets. So now more manufacturers might get in on it, if they know that they can make reproduction sets (probably with minor changes where some newer brick designs are protected) without action against them.

[antp]

34 minutes ago, MAB said:

So now more manufacturers might get in on it, if they know that they can make reproduction sets (probably with minor changes where some newer brick designs are protected) without action against them.

If they make a worse quality clone than Lepin, that may help Lego however: it will show that the real one is much higher quality (currently a problem for Lego with Lepin is that the clone does not seem so bad in some cases, from what I heard), and you cannot easily distinguish one clone from another.

Edited August 31, 2018 by antp

[MAB]

2 hours ago, antp said:

If they make a worse quality clone than Lepin, that may help Lego however: it will show that the real one is much higher quality (currently a problem for Lego with Lepin is that the clone does not seem so bad in some cases, from what I heard), and you cannot easily distinguish one clone from another.

The problem with that is many of the cloners are now on par with LEGO quality. I have a number of knock off minifigs and aside from colour matching, there parts are just as good a quality as the real thing and in a number of cases the printing surpasses LEGO's.

[fred67]

12 minutes ago, MAB said:

The problem with that is many of the cloners are now on par with LEGO quality. I have a number of knock off minifigs and aside from colour matching, there parts are just as good a quality as the real thing and in a number of cases the printing surpasses LEGO's.

Minifigures, maybe, but the basic brick quality is still not LEGO, not on par, or anywhere near par.  They may have improved, as have all the competitors - including the more legitimate ones like MB and Bestlock, but even with those "mainstream" brands there is still a noticeable quality difference.  I just separated out about 20% from a bulk lot because it was Bestlock.  I may have gotten overzealous and actually discarded some LEGO.  I was very unhappy.  But I have bought some MB sets (particularly a call of duty zombie set).  The brick quality was high, but not as good as LEGO.

[Mylenium]

4 hours ago, fred67 said:

I firmly believe in IP and copyright and patent protections, and I think when people try to capitalize on the work of others in a way that can financially harm the IP holder

It's really just about copying the designs, artwork and names. Proving that there was any harm done by selling cheaper versions of sets, when people likely never would have bought the more expensive LEGO stuff, anyway, is another matter entirely and would likely be even more impossible to prove, considering the market(s) we are talking about. The rest would require too many longwinded explanations, but suffice it to say that LEGO just should leave it be. Copyright and trademark law just isn't on their side here. LEPIN could change a few things in compliance with the ruling and they'd still be making the same knock-off sets more or less legally according to Chinese laws (presumably). The only place where this is even of consequence is China, anyway. LEPIN could move their operations to a different place and then what? Another twenty years of cat and mouse play? Can't say I ever see this working out for LEGO. It's the old gag: Being "right" and being legally right are different things as are winning in court and enforcing a ruling.

Mylenium

[Mylenium]

Small Update: On Facebook someone hinted that the info based on those partial and potentially wrongly translated bits may not be correct at all, so this could turn out entirely differently, after all. Supposedly LEGO will provide an official explanation soon-ish.

Mylenium

[SquirrelArmy]

I think what it comes down to is that you can't copyright the way you assemble a selection of bricks. Artwork, Logos, likenesses of characters can be licensed though which is what the lawsuit has been focused on.

Xingbao who are part of the same company as Lepin concentrates on it's own designs with a heavy focus on military sets which LEGO choose not to produce for ethical reasons. Their military models are very well detailed. You could recreate those sets in LEGO if you wanted a military display. Would you then be guilty of stealing a design? If you then use bricklink to source the bricks you're also using a 3rd party supply without any money going to TLG.

Xingbao also have their own modular building series with some sets aimed at a more adult market. It's great to have more choice of buildings when creating a city

Other companies do try and sell Lepin and other clone brands in the European market, sites such as LegoEngland are selling cloned sets as LEGO, even using LEGO's own promotional material to sell replica bricks. When a company is trying to sell an inferior product using the LEGO brand is where TLG have a stronger case. I'm not linking to the LegoEngland website as it's full of malware.

 

As consumers we should have a choice of where we want to buy our bricks. The patent on the locking brick system has expired, anyone with access to injection moulding machines can make bricks compatible with LEGO. 3D Printing technology isn't as quite as accurate yet but one day it will be and you'll probably see an increase of printed parts coming to the market in the future. 

As a consumer I want to know what bricks I'm buying. As long as its clear what the brand of bricks is. I can make my own choice. As LEGO continue to raise their price per brick especially for licensed sets more people will look to source bricks elsewhere. Even the online Pick a Brick shop is incredibly overpriced for what you get.

For example I've recently made a large bricklink order of over 2500 pieces. This cost just under £100. The equivalent order direct from LEGO would have cost over £300 and they don't even stock the full range of what I needed. They charge 6p just for a single round stud. There's no licensing, no box art, no design work yet they think that's an acceptable price for their smallest single brick? This is where things have to change in the future. 

Edited September 1, 2018 by SquirrelArmy

[fred67]

S@H PAB has always been ridiculously priced.  If they priced sets like that, they'd cost 2 or more times what the sets sell for, but imagine you're TLG and someone orders a 1x1 round for $0.01.  You lose money, even if the part doesn't cost that much to make.  It's a completely different topic, though.

The fact is that TLG needs to attempt to protect it's legal standing with copyrights, patents, and trademarks, or risk losing them.  You can't let someone get away with it, and then sue someone else for doing the same thing, or suing the first company years later so that you can ask for more in damages.  You need to keep up with protecting your IP, or the court will weaken your hold on it because you failed to act.  It's why most laws have statutes of limitation.

[MAB]

On 8/31/2018 at 9:12 PM, fred67 said:

Minifigures, maybe, but the basic brick quality is still not LEGO, not on par, or anywhere near par. 

 

I don't agree here. I recently sorted a job lot of mixed bricks and the only way I could tell the difference between real lego and some MB and Cobi bricks was the logo on the studs.