Lego outright copied the UK Kiddicraft bricks, then improved on them.
Then they sued the pants of anybody using their patent acquired through a not-so-honest patent application. Before they actually went to court they bought the rights to the Kiddicraft blocks to avoid embarrassment in court.
I'm a huge Lego fan but this is definitely one of the darker pages from the Lego history book and one more reason for me to look at patents in a negative way.
The weird thing is that Lego did just fine, quality wise the competition was in terrible shape and the publicity around the lawsuit made plenty of people aware of the alternatives.
Given how dirty Lego played the patent game (and to some extent still does) the degree of hypocrisy is quite annoying for a brand that I otherwise love to support.
Incidentally, my side project is around 'Lego' and I'm having a ton of fun with it (robotics, large amounts of Lego, what's not to like :) ?).
Also don't forget that after their patent(s) expired Lego tried to claim that their shape was part of their trademark. Sued the pants off of MegaBlocks for trademark infringement in Canada. Lego lost in Federal Court, lost in the Federal Court of Appeals, and finally lost in the Supreme Court, 7-0 on the doctrine of functionality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkbi_AG_v_Ritvik_Holdings_In...).
Seeing this history I'm even more disgusted by Lego than before. Even when they added the holes on underside I'm not sure that should have been seen as sufficiently innovative to be granted a patent. And any patents before... well... prior art and all that.
No, it was merely featured on boingboing in 2011. When that patent was filed, the US had a patent term of 17 years, meaning it probably expired in 1975.
You are correct. That's what I get for believing this CNET writer.[1]
According to Wikipedia, all of Lego's patents had expired by 1989.[2]
They have filed copyright infringement lawsuits and they unsuccessfully attempted to trademark the shape of their bricks in the EU. But they haven't had a patent in quite a while.
I volunteered at my son's school to help with the robotics team. Programming the Mindstorms EV3 sets are an interesting challenge. Teaching 4th and 5th grade kids about programming using a visual language is very new to me.
It's a familiar story that the innovators are not the ones to capitalize on an idea.
So, the trick is, wait for a new fragmented market to emerge. Once it gets enough tracktion swoop in and execute really well and become the market leader.
Or do as Lego did, swoop in and patent key parts, refuse to license them and stifle innovation while executing just well enough in the sector for years to come. When your patent expires, try design patents, trademarks and copyrights to sue competitors (often unsuccessfully in court, but that doesn't matter) rather than innovating and bringing down prices to competitive levels. YMMV.
Apple. A large part of their success is their ability to realize when the time is right to really polish some existing product type that's almost ready to go mainstream and release an ultra-polished version just as that segment is burgeoning (and helping it do just that). That they get in so early, and with a product that's so superior to those existing in the market at the time, helps the popular opinion that they innovated the product, when in fact they just iterated, but iterated several steps at once and did so really well.
Pick your Apple "innovation", and it's usually fairly easy to find the prior versions: the Mac GUI, ipod., iphone, macbook, etc.
There's nothing wrong with this. It's obviously lucrative for them, and it helps us get good polished designs quicker than we otherwise would.
What was the prior version of the iPhone? Genuinely curious. I've heard references to the Apple Newton, but that's about it.
Also, unless something was out by decades prior, I feel it's a bit difficult to truly know when something was "innovated" first. After all, polish takes time and customers typically only see what's released. Speaking of Apple, they've bought wireless charging patents as early as 2007, maybe earlier. But they've largely sat on them without a product (prior to the watch) as they often do, seemingly because the end product would not be at the level of polish they desire. I get less of a sense that it's a passive biding of their time to strike and start polishing, and more of a, is it possible to build it the way they want and have it be affordable (to their target market).
That may have come across stronger than intended. I didn't mean to imply that Apple doesn't innovate, just that what many would consider their largest and most well known innovations are less innovative than many believe. Even those those, are still innovative, as they always include their own advances to the state of the art when producing their new polished, iteratively leaping products. Indeed, it would be hard to successfully employ as many people as they do in the industry they are in without coming out with their own innovations.
That said, the Everything is a Remix video TeMPOraL linked in a sibling comment is good, and highlights my point of view quite nicely. Apple is good at taking mostly existing technologies and putting them together, as well as providing a high level of polish to existing combinations.
Nokia n95 and the iPaq were nominally similar in capability to an early iPhone. But the lack of "polish" and failure to deliver a solution vs. a gadget made those other devices a silly device to most people.
Then they sued the pants of anybody using their patent acquired through a not-so-honest patent application. Before they actually went to court they bought the rights to the Kiddicraft blocks to avoid embarrassment in court.
I'm a huge Lego fan but this is definitely one of the darker pages from the Lego history book and one more reason for me to look at patents in a negative way.
The weird thing is that Lego did just fine, quality wise the competition was in terrible shape and the publicity around the lawsuit made plenty of people aware of the alternatives.
Given how dirty Lego played the patent game (and to some extent still does) the degree of hypocrisy is quite annoying for a brand that I otherwise love to support.
Incidentally, my side project is around 'Lego' and I'm having a ton of fun with it (robotics, large amounts of Lego, what's not to like :) ?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiddicraft