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Comment by nitrogen | Hacker News Reader

A 4x2 press-fit brick is more like using a rounded rectangle in a phone repair shop logo, not "Apple" itself.

for the uninitiated: rounded rectangles as a shape for phones is an apple design patent, they sued samsung for that

A patent is for products not for logos

Yes design patents are different from trademarks and the apple rounded rectangle phone design is a US design patent while the 2x2 lego brick is registered in the EU as a 3d trademark. Filing for a trademark on a shop name and logo may not be as easily challenged with only an existing design patent and no matching trademark.

So yes, the metaphor in the parent is faulty in that small detail when it picks up the metaphor created in the grandparent to better explain what is going on.

They have one for their charger shapes as well among many other things.

First, he called himself Legoheld and then he tried to trademark that name and his logo, specifically an image trademark for any visualization containing a 4x2 or 2x2 brick.

Only one company can hold that trademark, Lego currently holds it, so if his trademark claim had succeeded, Lego would have lost theirs.

> he called himself Legoheld and then he tried to trademark that name

can you give any citation for that? Because i can find zero sources for that claim. Sources for the conflict around the logo design are ample, see his filing for the logo (1) and the one from the corporation (2). I can find no filing for your claim about the name in the official database and no media reports supporting it anywhere, only that in 2013, years before the first conflict with the corporation, his brand was already established as "Held der Steine".(3)

1: https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/register/3020182... 2: https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/registerHABM?AKZ... 3: https://www.welt.de/regionales/frankfurt/article121164920/Ve...

> if his trademark claim had succeeded, Lego would have lost theirs.

no. The marks would be seen as reasonably different. As others have noted the corporations ability to sue in similar cases might be reduced if they create a history of tolerating such "reasonably different" marks, but they would not have lost their design trademark, especially because theirs is a 3D design mark and his was word+logo mark and they are filed for different things. I personally think his mark would have had little to no effect on theirs and he might have had an actual chance of winning in court, albeit a phyrric victory. He cancelled his filing and filed the same name with a different image.

For the whole "invalidating of design patents" there is a far more interesting case that has nothing to do with him: Delta Sport Handelskontor GmbH vs LEGO A/S where the former tried to have EU design patent 001664368-0006 invalidated so they can print and sell the exact same plastic piece under the PLAYTIVE® brand on the market. They lost in court during appeal.

> especially because theirs is a 3D design mark and his was word+logo mark and they are filed for different things

Lego has a design mark for the silhouette of a 4x2 or 2x2 brick for clothing.

Held der Steine tried to obtain a design mark for the silhouette of a 2x2 brick for clothing for his merchandise.

That’s an obvious conflict.

This is wrong, he called himself Held der Steine. To suggest that because a solitary small time shop owner uses a fully generic image of a toy brick will cause the mighty Lego brand to get lost is bizarre. To be sure Lego does not have a copyright, trademark or patent on generic click-to-fit toy bricks and this has been ascertained by a high German court after one decade of strenuous litigation. Lego acts as though they had won that case but the didn't.

> To be sure Lego does not have a copyright, trademark or patent on generic click-to-fit toy bricks and this has been ascertained by a high German court after one decade of strenuous litigation

Lego actually won that case for clothing and merchandise. Only for actual bricks they lost it.

He tried to get a trademark on merchandise for his line of clothing, which conflicted with that.

He has never called himself "Legoheld"! He had a Logo with a structure similar to a lego brick on it. You can google the image...

It would probably be like, if a company uses an apple symbol with their company name on a logo. There are by the way many apple juice producers which use an apple symbol in their logos...

But apple juice manufacturers are (in the general case) not in the "we manufacture and/or sell electronic products". At which point they would probably end up in an interesting legal tangle.

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