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LEGO fight Against Chinese counterfeit LEGO
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Comments
If the woman were selling GACCIN purses instead of GUCCI purses, do you think there is even a case?
South America's population is quite a bit more than the North's; China's is more than double both of them put together.
The US is supposed to be polarising, as many individual countries are - something which explains the rise of more "radical" politicians in various nations. The rich are becoming richer, the poor becoming poorer, and the middle often fading.
Curiously, countries across the world are equalising, with many of the traditionally richer or poorer countries heading towards the middle.
pretty satisfied. thought it would be more "off"
dont have much baseplates to compare
light grey a bit too dark (or blue)
green looks exactly like the green from an old pirates set baseplate (~1990), but it could be faded from age/wear/whatever
Are the thicknesses of the bases the same as lego? Do you notice any difference when butted together side-by-side? They have a few nice colours that lego don't make.
Buying Counterfeit/IP infringing products
If you knowingly buy a counterfeit product you can be taken to civil court but the company has to prove that you knew it was counterfeit and any compensation they obtain from you requires them to prove monetary loss - i.e. they have to prove that you would've given them the money instead if you hadn't bought the counterfeit. As such there is little action they can take against you in reality. However, counterfeit products CAN be seized by your country's customs and immigration body, police and so on and so forth depending on local laws (this is true in pretty much all of the Western world), so you might find yourself out of pocket and out of product.
Many of the products here ARE counterfeit because they infringe on TLG's designs, Disney's copyrights and trademarkets and so on and so forth. A product does NOT have to be identical to be classed as a counterfeit, it only has to have sufficiet similarity to the product claiming infringement. In this case pretty much all of Lepin's products would seem to fit the bill.
Selling Counterfeit/IP infringing products
This IS a criminal act. As soon as you seek to gain profit from selling these products you jump from the realm of civil offence to criminal offence.
Summary
You're not a criminal if you buy these things, you're only committing a civil offence, though you are at (albeit very low) risk of having the product seized and not being able to get your money back - it's upto you to try and get it back.
The people producing and selling these things however ARE criminals because they're engaging in criminal counterfeiting and IP infringement. This is pretty much true regardless of jurisdiction as most countries involved such as China are signatories to the relevant conventions declaring this to be the case. The fact they don't enforce their laws is another matter, but non-enforcement isn't the same as not-illegal, though sometimes this sort of situation is declared as defacto legalised. Regardless of the terminology used it's still a criminal act until such time laws regulating this are repealed by the countries involved, something which has not happened to date.
Not all clone brands fall into this category, companies such as Oxford produce non-infringing Lego compatible products that are largely original designs and not easily confused with Lego.
Also, it's worth taking a step back and thinking about what criminal activity actually means, I'd wager most people are guilty of carrying out criminal acts at some point in their lives, if you've driven even 1mph over the speed limit in the UK then you've committed a criminal act, but it's not enforced as such because just about every police authority gives a 10% + 2mph leeway on enforcement. Criminal activity can also mean the mass murder of many innocent civilians. So as you can see, it's easy to throw around words like criminal to try and make something sound terrible, but whether it really is terrible or not is really only ever going to be a subjective judgement - most people would shrug their shoulders at going 1mph over the speed limit, most people would agree mass murder is an appalling criminal act. What you feel about producing or selling counterfeit products though is going to be entirely upto you as an individual, and hence using words like criminal in a debate like this is bound to stir completely opposite reactions in different people because it's an act some people care deeply about, and others couldn't give a damn about, so I wouldn't get too caught up on the fact it is criminal - because to some people, certain criminal offences like this might as well just not be.
Yet that situation is different for minifigs. They are about $1 a piece. I can totally understand people buying the fakes compared to having to buy expensive sets to get them.
Type something right at the very end of the box.
Toggle back by hitting </> again.
The trouble is that can be no demonstrable loss.
There also has to be a bigger question of whether selling a bag of pieces, which might or might not be used to build a particular model, past or present, falls foul of the law. And if it does, how many "spare pieces" have to be added before it doesn't.
For what it's worth though I agree this is a complete market failure when a product doesn't get reproduced. To me it's incredibly frustrating the idea that a product can be taken out of production, but no one is allowed to make it even though the original owners wont either. This is particularly frustrating with things like books and video games, as it ultimately means that human knowledge is effectively being destroyed by copyright laws and the like in those circumstances.
The obvious solution though is simply to reduce copyright terms, personally I think if you can't make a decent profit on a product in, say, 20 years, then it's unlikely you're really ever going to. Better to let someone else have a go than risk the idea disappearing into nothingness, but that's entirely my opinion of course.
I'm not a complete free market whack job, I think there need to be at least some controls in a healthy economy, but I don't think artificial scarcity is a necessary or even healthy control to impose or support as it always creates way more problems than it's ever solved.
Back on topic, I can't see myself ever buying a copied set here, but can definitely see the appeal if they get to the "can't tell the difference but it is half the price" level of quality.
Not that I'm anyone to defend the music business in any way, but there may be any number of other reasons why they haven't made a particular album / piece of music available, including not having online distribution rights agreed with the artist / composer.
As a consumer, I completely agree with you though, it's a right royal pain in the proverbial... ;-)
I agree that the LEPIN STAR WNRS sets do look like they would be illegal, which is why I would expect either a lawsuit or a license.
This is the ultimate question. The other part of IP is that the creator must demonstrate tangible damages.
If I steal your idea of an inflatable dartboard, you do nothing with it, but then I lose my shirt in the marketplace trying to sell them - it's completely moot.
Principles are nice, but the point of equity courts is balance actual damages.
I have no experience with other copy-cats, but Lepin seems to deliver good quality (tho the minifigs are open for debate and often not so good) and the price difference is huge, take for example the resistance carrier 75140, ordering it from Lego would cost me $88,90- ordering it from Lepin would cost me $26.59 (both including p&p)
I don't want my lego to be mixed up with imitations, but Lego should think about their pricing, i can fully understand the average housewife buying Lepin for het kids.
I don't have the answer. I think it would need a court decision or two to sort it out.
The difference is that the pins itself on a brick are not protected anymore, there have been cases about that and the rulings are very clear. Everybody is allowed to produce bricks that resemble the lego bricks, just don't call them Lego. As for whole sets, there have been cases about that (Coco for example) for which the Chinese high court repeated the verdict of the lower Chinese court that the whole set is without doubt an infrigement. That is the difference. And what the American court decides is meaningless, unless Lego goes for a reseller within America, Lepin itself is not so stupid to sell directly in Europe of the USA themselves, therefor a case only can be started in China, and thus it's the former Chinese verdicts that count, and those are very clear about this.
And you bricklinking a set has nothing to do with a company on large scale copying a design from another company. Everybody is allowed to produce fabric and make handbags, tho you are not allowed to manufacture the fabric in a way that it looks exactly like the newest clothing from another company if that set/design should be considered unique.
Neither is that.
The case by Interlego against Coko involved the copyright of 53 separate pieces ("bricks" if you like), not sets themselves. Indeed, Coko's defence was that they couldn't be sued for an infringement of the design of parts of a toy. That was dismissed and infringement was found for 33 of the 53 pieces, the moulds destroyed, an apology made, and a tiny sum paid as compensation. A second defendant, Fuxing Market, was ordered to stop selling sets containing the infringing parts, but they were found to not actually be infringing copyright.
Not in a Chinese court. If the case with Coko taught TLG anything, it was that they might win, but only on those aspects of the case that would be virtually impossible to dismiss - and that it was actually hardly worth winning anyway.
They'd also have a very hard time proving information was stolen - if it was so easy to prove, they'd would've known how it was happening and taken action to prevent it. There is also still the matter of whether you can copyright a set - the example you gave doesn't do so.
I doubt TLG would dare to sue a company that had beaten them in the release race - the result might have catastrophic consequences for TLG.
Consequently, I found the answer to phase two of the Underpants Gnomes equation:
Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: Sell Underpants at Fuxing Market
Phase 3: Profit!
Get it?
What a Fuxing mess.
As I said earlier, if you buy these sets, it won't fill the hole in your collection and you'll feel guilty!
i'm waiting for the discussion that one day someone if going to ask: I own the fake version of this set, can I marked it as owned in my inventory? No!
1. Much cheaper toy for the kids, and the kids don't care and have the same amount of fun.
2. To be able to do a build without spending hundreds on it.
3. To fill a gap in their showcase for which they otherwise would not have the money, especially a bunch of minifigs for starwars have insanely prices in my opinion, i have a lot of 40 starwars sets without the minifigs but after looking at the prices gave up immediately the idea of adding the figs to the sets.
And there's a whole horde of people waiting to dive in the proper clones since they love the toy but lack the money that Lego is asking. From a collector's point of view it's just not Lego, so it's useless stuff. But a huge group just wants a toy for the kids or enjoy some building. I think it's not so long before Lego clones are as common in local facebook groups as Adidas fake sportswear is, i won't do it. But if i would bargain a nice price on a lot of new Lepin sets, i could easily double the price (or more) and sell them within very short time on Facebook, Heck if i'd to 2 or 3 runs i'd be able to buy the original 10179
Big problem for Lego is that a lot of people just don't care and only see the much cheaper price for the same amount of fun. And let's face it, the pieces are of very good quality and the building process is fully equal as is the end result, it only bears a different name.