patents
Is Nanoblock not in violation of LEGO&#39;s patents because their product is incompatible with and not the same size as LEGO&#39;s product?
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoblock" rel="noreferrer">Nanoblock</a> is an interlocking brick toy similar to LEGO.</p>
<p>They have an <a href="https://nanoblockus.com/nanoblocks-vs-lego/" rel="noreferrer">article</a> on their website that describes their toy and compares it to LEGO. It makes the following claim:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You may wonder if there is a patent infringement case against Nanoblocks for making a copycat product similar to LEGO. The answer is no.</p>
<p>To avoid a patent claim, Nanoblocks are not compatible with LEGO. Nanoblocks are about one-quarter of the size of LEGO blocks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is it true that Nanoblock is not in violation of LEGO's patents because their copycat product is incompatible with and is not the same size as LEGO's product?</p>

<p>There are two very different laws in play here. Patent rights and trademarks.</p>
<p><strong>One cannot violate a patent on Lego bricks, because they have all run out a long time ago.</strong></p>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lego_Group#Trademark_and_patents" rel="noreferrer">Wikipedia article</a> has a relevant section on this. Therefore it is very legal from a patent point of view to produce compatible bricks (and there are several companies that do).</p>
<p>More complicated is the trademark aspect. Lego tries to sue everyone that attempts to sell its bricks with the statement &quot;lego compatible&quot; or something similar, and the use of the name &quot;Lego&quot; as a name for the bricks in general is contested (sometimes successfully, sometimes less so), even though that is quite common in colloquial speech.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/mega-bloks-wins-scoc-ruling-on-lego-trademark-1.555292" rel="noreferrer">Canadian supreme court ruled</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;Trademark law should not be used to perpetuate monopoly rights enjoyed under now-expired patents&quot;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bottom line: You may produce lego-compatible bricks, but you must not name them like that. It's probably best you just don't use the name &quot;Lego&quot; at all.</p>
