LEGO Crushes Ausini Brand on Minifigure Copyright Fight in China

Everyone heard about LEGO vs LEPIN and how it ended with the culprit jailed and fined CNY 90 million. Another lawsuit brought by LEGO against alternative brick brand Ausini on usage of Minifigure design in the logo had gone under the radar. The outcome had huge repercussion to all the alternative bricks brands that included minifigures in their sets.

Minifigure Copyright Fight

LEGO is well known for protecting its minifigure ferociously because they still own the copyright for the figure. During 2015, The General Court of the Europe Union had ruled that the shape of LEGO’s figures is a protected trademark and cannot be copied. LEGO had sued many toys makers for infringing the minifigure design, for example Zuru, Lite Brix, Mega Brand and Best-Lock.

For the first time LEGO had defended the copyright of the minifigure in China through a lawsuit. The other party in the case, Ausini （奥斯尼）is second tier brick brand in China that used minifigure as its trademark and logo.

Sets with Ausini minifigure logo

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In Oct 12 2016, LEGO filed a case against Chinese Patent Office to invalidate Ausini trademark that had the minifigure. Beijing Intellectual Property Court ruled in favour of LEGO and ordered the Patent Office to cancel the trademark of Ausini. Ausini appealed the ruling at Beijing Municipal High People’s Court. The court heard that case in May 24^th 2018 with LEGO losing the case. LEGO appealed the ruling and came second round of legal fight. Finally, in May 29 2020, the Beijing court ruled in favour of LEGO. The second appeal focused on the point whether usage of Ausini logo had infringed LEGO’s copyright on the minifigure. There are three important principals that Beijing court used in awarding the case in favour of LEGO. First, LEGO had been using the design of the “mini human” 迷你人 for long period of time and is the copyright holder of the said design. Second, Ausini logo is similar to the upper body of the “mini human” which LEGO had the copyright.  Third, Ausini is in toy industry and it shall have known the existence of the “mini human”. The similarity between the Ausini logo and LEGO “mini human” cannot be attributed as creative coincidence. Ausini had redesigned their logo after losing the case.

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  New Ausini logo

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  Ausini set with new logo

Minifigures Redesign

Before the final verdict is out, other alternative brands in China had taken steps to modify their figure design to avoid crossing sword with the Danish toy company. Still, these redesigned minifigure resemble replica of LEGO minifigure in many ways. If LEGO is serious in upholding the minifigure copyright, future lawsuit would likely be handled by Beijing court because the intellectual property right matter is under Chinese Patent Office jurisdiction located there. Most alternative brands are located in Chenghai of Guangzhou and had the lawsuit filed elsewhere means they lost the home turf advantage.

Minifigures of various alternative brands

Xingbao

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Qman/Keeppley

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Rael

Zhegao

Gobricks

Perhaps LEGO is using this lawsuit as a test case with Chinese court on minifigure copyright. Winning this lawsuit had proven Chinese court would upheld minifigure copyright for LEGO similar to the EU court. So far no alternative brands is heard being drag to court and following could be the reasons.

1. There are too many brands to pursue and individual law cases take years to end.

2. LEGO don’t want to be seen as a foreign company that using legal maneuver to turn itself into a monopoly of interlocking bricks business in China.

3. Sword of Damocles on alternative bricks. LEGO could opt to use this as weapon to bring down rivals, especially the like of SEMBO, QMAN who had grown popular in China. LEGO is looking for the right target and biding for the right moment to strike.

Bring Down the Alternative Brands

Based on our analysis, if LEGO were to use copyright as legal weapon, one possible target is Enlighten Brand, also known as QMAN and owned the sister brand Keeppley. QMAN had managed to secure licensing right for popular ACG (Animation, Comics and Games) in China. One of them is Naruto. This could be the reason why LEGO failed to award IDEAS entry Ichiraku Ramen Shop by DadiTwins as winner. Though DadiTwins had submitted improved version of the Ramen Shop, unlikely LEGO would chose it as winner because Keeppley had the license in China to make Naruto building sets. LEGO preferred exclusive license with IP holders and exclude other brick makers. For Japanese anime licensing holder, the usual practice is to award non-exclusive license rights to multiple licensees to make related merchandises. Beside Keeppley, another Chinese brand JMuLP (集木良品） also had the right to make Naruto interlocking bricks toys in China as far back in 2016. QMAN/Keeppley had secure rights to Doraemon, Pokemon, Naruto, Evangelion and Hello Kitty. One could imagine how many IP that LEGO had to overlook because they had been taken by alternative bricks. The China market is important for LEGO’s future growth and the ACG culture is popular there. LEGO might had to take down alternative brands with IP in that area shall the company decided to compete in the fields of ACG.

Licensed Keeppley Naruto Sets. Check out the reviews on Keeppley Naruto sets.

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Licensed JMuLP Naruto Sets

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Having say that, any alternative brands could become target as long as they had LEGO compatible figures in their sets. Certain brands such as Mould King and CADA are offering building sets that didn’t come with minifigures. These brands are counting on buyers to source the figures from other brands such as KORUIT, WM and XINH for their sets. Imagine alternative brands no longer allowed to include minifigures in their offerings and the brick toys sets would be like losing the soul. There are minifigures blackout on various online platform such as Aliexpress. LEGO could apply to stop shipments of brick building sets that had minifigures to enforce minifigure copyright. At the point of writing we haven’t came across new lawsuit in China that filed by LEGO on minifigure copyright.

Please refer to the judgement on LEGO vs Ausini.