I don’t want to share my Legos!

by Mark Malek

We here at TacticalIP like to monitor intellectual property news and try to report it to you.  You may have noticed that we pride ourselves on pointing out improper enforcement actions taken by trademark owners.  For example, we have previously posted a feature called IP Bully Of The Month.  (see here and here).

As I was reading through some intellectual property news that I normally watch, I came across a story that I thought I would share.  While this doesn’t top my list of overzealous trademark owners trying to enforce rights that they don’t really have, I felt it deserved a mention.  Turns out that The Lego Group (yes – the same company that makes the toys we all played with as kids and the toys that I step on in the middle of the night in my house now) has decided to sue Project LEGOS, a community outreach program started by two University of Minnesota alums.  The “LEGOS” in Project LEGOS stands for “Leadership, Empowerment, Growth, Opportunity, Sustainability.”

The Lego Group toy company, however, sued Project LEGOS and alleged trademark infringement, trademark dilution and cybersquatting.  More particularly, The Lego Group claims that “the consuming public is likely to be confused, deceived and misled into believing that Project LEGOS’ services are provided, authorized, endorsed or sponsored by The Lego Group.”  Seriously?  If that is the case, then anyone who could possibly confuse a community outreach program with the toys probably needs some help from the community outreach program.

Again, we see a big IP Bully flexing their IP muscle for no good reason.  I know that some of you are going to comment that they have a point, but so what if they do?  From a purely legal perspective, I agree.  In fact, if Project LEGOS is made up of a bunch of wackos that would give The Lego Group a bad name, then by all means, shut it down.  That’s not the case here though.  I am analyzing this one from a business perspective.  At what point did some Attorney think it was a good idea to bring this action?  Without filing the trademark infringement suit, there is no way that nearly anyone outside of a 10 mile radius of where Project LEGOS is located would have ever heard of them.  In a way, Project LEGOS should be thanking The Lego Group for all the publicity.  Maybe TacticalIP can be sued by some ridiculously overzealous trademark owner so that we can get a bunch of free publicity . . . .