[OldTimeCoffee]

You've linked a Daily Mail story with a baseless assertion and LEGO themselves said it was because of the logo of the store. The story has the owner of the store holding up a t-shirt of the logo such that it's somewhat obscured and the remaining focus is on the store itself.

[pantalaimon]

Well he stopped selling LEGO after that and is now promoting LEGO alternatives which do have a better price / quality ratio.

That LEGO tries to push any competition out of the market with shady legal tactics (e.g. claiming minifigures appear too similar even though they clearly feature different proportions and characteristics) while at the same time hiking prices leaves a bad taste.

[em-bee]

indeed. fortunately bluebrixx is now attempting to get the lego 3d design mark of their minifigures invalidated. not because bluebrix wants to sell minifigure clones, but because lego is using their 3d mark as basis for their claim that any other minifigures even dissimilar ones would violate that mark. bluebrix believes that they have a good chance to be successful.

[em-bee]

this guy unfortunately did make some mistakes. he did change his logo though, but he later got in trouble again for not clearly distinguishing between lego and compatible brands.

however lego has been very heavy handed in dealing with him and others, causing him to choose to stop selling any lego in his store, focusing on alternative brands only.

lego is trying to prevent competing brands to sell their models at all costs. currently they are fighting bluebrixx and johnny's world, who are both large german importers of alternative brands on the basis of the similarity of their minifigures, while those minifigures are not similar at all (except for the fact that they have the expected body parts and are compatible with lego bricks)