r/dankmemes • u/only777 ☣️ • Jul 30 '24

I am probably an intellectual or something Suck it America

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u/nekoeuge Jul 30 '24

They are just salty because if “Lego” becomes a true noun, they won’t be able to trademark it anymore. Just like Google is salty about “googling” becoming a verb. I am not a lawyer, but I remember reading about this stuff, so I am like 70% confident it’s correct.

15

u/Senor-Delicious Jul 30 '24

Lego started suing content creators that called other manufacturers' bricks "Legos". So yeah. They are pretty aggressive about it.

6

u/nekoeuge Jul 30 '24

What would be the ground for the lawsuit? Company is not entitled to determine the development of spoken language.

15

u/Piratedan200 Jul 30 '24

In this case, the lawsuits are necessary to keep the trademark. If they didn't take legal action against people using the term "Legos" to refer to the bricks, they could lose the trademark. To avoid having your trademark turn into a generic term, you HAVE to take legal action to enforce it (in the US)

7

u/CapnRogo Jul 30 '24

This. Otherwise competitors can start selling "legos", and now your company name means nothing to new consumers in the market.

2

u/Senor-Delicious Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 30 '24

Not a lawyer. I can just say that they did this. In this example to a German guy having a pretty big Lego related YouTube channel. I assume you can in fact sue people for advertising products with your company name if the products are not by your company.

Edit: I can only give you German articles about it. But Google translate should be fine to translate the page to English I'd assume. For example this.