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Did LEGO Just Copy Its Own Copycat?

I hate to say it, but LEGO might be getting inspiration from the very companies that started out as LEGO copycats. And it’s more than just a sneaky feeling…

Attila Vágó
Bricks n’ Brackets

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Photo and edits by author.

The TLDR of an otherwise very long and fraught story is that the LEGO Group had a patent for a long time. Think decades. But patent law is a fickle friend, and it often starts expiring on you just when you’re really getting to milk it. The LEGO design patents were no exception and in the early 2000s some of those patents started expiring, with the original finally expiring in 2011. While before that, LEGO was able to fight copycat companies in court and win case after case, past this date a myriad of new successful brands appeared almost out of nowhere making LEGO-compatible bricks. The only tangible difference? No LEGO branding on the studs, thus enter the likes of COBI and CaDA, the latter of which seems to have inspired LEGO, and not for the right reasons.

For a long time, it was the other way around. The nearly century-old Danish toy company did all the research legwork, and everyone else just “stole” the designs. If LEGO made a McLaren P1, CaDA made an Assassin XR. If LEGO made a white Porsche 911, CaDA made a red Classic Sports Car. If LEGO made a NASA Artemis Space Launch System set, CaDA made

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