[jimmyswimmy]

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.

[TeMPOraL]

> 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-war...

[joshuaissac]

I remember those. They were distributed all around the world. Wikipedia lists about 60 countries.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazos

[TeMPOraL]

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_]

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.

[hackerfromthefu]

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]

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.

[molsonhart]

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®

[reitzensteinm]

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]

> 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]

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]

> 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_]

Do they have a patent on it though? The article mainly talks about IP, copyright and trademarks. (although IP and patents are probably the same thing, IDK)

[jimmydddd]

They have a pending patent application. It would have to be allowed by the patent office to become a patent.

[phasetransition]

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200254357A1/en?invento...

[reitzensteinm]

Clearly solid engineering, but one hell of a stretch to call that an invention. I wonder if it'll be granted.

[rwmurrayVT]

I can't believe I ever considered being a patent examiner after I finished my engineering degree...

[jimmydddd]

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]

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]

jimmy,

believe it or not, this isn't my first rodeo.

[jimmydddd]

@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]

Agreed.

[bobby_bob]

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.

[Aeolun]

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

[shalmanese]

Lego found itself increasingly unable to compete on quality as its competitors became good enough so Lego pivoted instead into building a defensible moat around licensed IP. Anyone can create a "Wizards and Warriors Brick Set" but only Lego can create the "Harry Potter Hogwarts Lego Set".

[Cthulhu_]

It pulled them out of a rut as well; if they hadn't done the IP's, the multi-media projects (like Ninjago, Nexo Knights, etc), the collector's items etc, the competitors would likely have taken up a lot of their market space once their patents expired.

That said, lego has (IIRC) always had really good quality and precision.

[schappim]

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]

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?

[taneq]

We have old Lego bricks bought back in the 80s, and it still works perfectly with Lego bought last week. That kind of long term precision isn't easy.

[OnlyOneCannolo]

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

[bnegreve]

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]

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.

[stdbrouw]

It seems obvious that the real question that was being asked was "How hard can it be to bake a piece of plastic into shape [given the current state of the plastics industry and technology in general]?" and the answer to that question is "not difficult at all."

If you consider everything that goes into setting up an email filter in your mail app, starting with how transistors work but also including ocean cables and the liquid crystals of your display, well, sure, it's crazy how much is needed just to drop a couple of emails into the right folders... but outside of a science documentary, that's not really what people have in mind when they ask whether something is difficult.

[OnlyOneCannolo]

It seems obvious that the real question that was being asked was "How hard can it be to type some computer words to make a program [given the current state of the software industry and technology in general]?" and the answer to that question is "not difficult at all."

Sure, you're not reinventing computer science. But a lot more work goes into making and maintaining a product than setting up an email filter.

[molsonhart]

Injection molding is really hard. I can program and I find it to be harder than computer science, by a lot.

[ip26]

The product is conceptually simple, but nailing the press fit on every block has got to require tight quality control- which is something fly-by-night knockoffs have never been known for.

[rkangel]

The problem is the same as in lots of mechanical engineering designs - accumulated tolerance.

Imagine building a wall that is 100 blocks long with lego bricks. In order to fit well, the length of the first row has to be close to the length of the second row (etc.). Otherwise you will have the feeling of forcing it into place (if it's even possible).

That length difference is the accumulation of the error on each of the 100 bricks in a row so to get a good fit each brick needs to be made incredibly precisely. The required tolerance is approximately 1 micron.

Injection moulding is a surprisingly imprecise art (if you're not careful), so making them repeatably to that tolerance at high volume and low cost is a difficult skill. I can't find the reference now, but Lego has developed the skill to the extent that in the past they have been asked to advise defence companies about precision manufacture.

[jdmichal]

I recently got some Mega Construx for my kid, as they have the license to make Pokemon characters. One of the Pokeballs that came in the set has visibly deformed pegs on the top, making it impossible to use as displayed in the instructions. Luckily it's not a big deal to be able to stack things on top of the Pokeball so I didn't bother to return it for that.

[rvba]

It is hard to keep the tolerances.

Many sources claim tolerances of 0.002 milometers

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/ah5cfz/how_am...

[gibolt]

There are plenty of clones. MegaBlocks has been the most visible for a long time. I believe Lego owns the exact dimensions and ratios of their bricks.

I recently got into NanoBlocks, which are about 1/4 the scale and different dimensions. Ease of storage and display due to tiny size is a big differentiator

[Polylactic_acid]

Its not hard, it just costs money. Lego is the default option and the only reason you would pick another brand is if it was cheaper and to be cheaper they have to cut corners since Lego isn't massively ripping people off.

[numpad0]

They C&D on lots of “building blocks” products that resemble theirs.

[londons_explore]

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]

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...

[molsonhart]

Thanks for this, very cool.

[8note]

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