Hey folks, I am serious about not infringing on copyright laws in my business. If I use a logo/character I have either gotten permission, pay royalty fees on edible images, or use licensed items.
That being said, I have a customer wanting a Lego cake with the sides of the cake looking like stacked multicolored Lego blocks with bumps in fondant. I explained to her (after reading some posts on here) that I wasn't comfortable recreating Legos and that I would do smooth building blocks with no bumps as the sides of the cake and then use the brick candies on top/around and she can use her kid's characters also.
She is now coming back to me saying it's not a copyright issue as long as I don't use the Lego word. And she's even gotten all her generic brick party supplies from a big box store.
I realize that there is often gray area in these situations, but I usually like to come to a compromise the legal way or play it safe. I just don't feel comfortable putting myself, reputation, and business at risk.
What would you do? And am I being overly paranoid about this?
I see it both ways. The thing that really gets me is that the Lego site says 2x4 brick. Not 2x4 brick with Lego logo. Say that 5 times fast. And the fact that these big box stores or anybody else for that matter may have paid Lego for using the brick even in its generic form. And they have many more dollars than I do to deal with a copyright matter.
I thought it was confusing when I skimmed through it this time and I've read it all before when my son said he wanted a Lego cake. And I thought you could use the bricks without the Lego logo but either I misunderstood or it's changed in the last 5 months.
I looked into it earlier this year and it's clear not to use the logo but the 2x4 brick is unclear so since I was doing cupcakes I went with 2x2s and cut letters with nubs on them. So for the cake you could do the letters instead of bricks.
I did some research for a LEGO request recently and found that LEGO people were still trademark protected, but it appears that they were not able to successfully maintain the trademark for the 2x4 brick. "After a series of appeals upholding that ruling, in 2010, the European Court of Justice held that the design of LEGO brick 'merely performs a technical function [and] cannot be registered as a trademark.'" This was in the EU but LEGO is Danish. If you don't put the LEGO logo on it for a brick, it shouldn't be a violation.
Here's an article about it as well: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/8002268/Lego-loses-11-year-trademark-battle.html
I did some research for a LEGO request recently and found that LEGO people were still trademark protected, but it appears that they were not able to successfully maintain the trademark for the 2x4 brick. "After a series of appeals upholding that ruling, in 2010, the European Court of Justice held that the design of LEGO brick 'merely performs a technical function [and] cannot be registered as a trademark.'" This was in the EU but LEGO is Danish. If you don't put the LEGO logo on it for a brick, it shouldn't be a violation.
Here's an article about it as well: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/8002268/Lego-loses-11-year-trademark-battle.html
I was going to say the same thing as @aarika . Lego's trademarks and logos can't be used, but they lost the exclusive rights to the actual block itself because it was considered to be generic shapes or something along those lines.
I think you can replicate lego bricks now. There was the legal battle and also that the bricks are so old that they had significantly reduced protection anyway...that's why there are now dozens of wannabe legos out there these days. I still think the old ones are the best though :-D
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