 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1997 |
| Founder | Torsten Geller |
| Headquarters | , England |
Number of locations | 6 |
Key people |
|
| Products | Toys |
| Subsidiaries | Cobi (part) |
| Website | best-lock |
Best-Lock Construction Toys is a brand of plastic building bricks that are compatible with Lego. Best-Lock Group Limited, which manufacture the bricks, is based in Colne, Lancashire, England.
Best-Lock was founded in 1997 by Torsten Geller after he looked into the legalities of Lego and other clones, which led him to look into Lego's past to find that Lego had copied their bricks from a British psychologist and inventor Hilary Page in the 1940s. [1] [2]
Best-Lock has been involved with multiple legal cases involving Lego. The company moved in 1998 against Lego's exclusivity claims to toy-block design. Best-Lock won the case in court thus allowing them to sell sets in Germany. [2] They defeated a patent challenge from Lego in 2004. [3] [4] In a further case in 2009, Lego was denied trademark protection for the shape of its bricks. [5]
Best-Lock and Cobi, a Polish building block manufacturer with a strong presence in Eastern Europe and Asia, announced a merger on 2 February 2006, in which Best-Lock purchased a part of Cobi. Plans called for Best-Lock to shift manufacturing to Cobi while Cobi expanded its manufacturing facilities. The merger has since yielded co-branded building block toys. Toys are still sold under the separate labels Best-Lock and Cobi, but many Cobi sets appear in North American retailers such as Toys R' Us and Amazon.com under the Best-Lock brand. [6]
In 2000, Lego filed a three-dimensional trademark for its mini-figures, which Best Lock had duplicated since 1998. Thus in 2012, Best-Lock sued to get the trademark revoked. On 16 June 2015, European Court of Justice upheld Lego's figure trademark. [7] [8]
Best-Lock offers different sized blocks including standard blocks, Junior Blocks (young children 2–5), and Baby Blocks (For kids 0–2). Themes for standard blocks include town sets (police, fire and construction), military, pirates, farming, and Kimmy (Best-Lock sets made for females). Licensed sets include The Terminator and Stargate SG-1 themes.
Lego is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously colored interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, because of its popularity or significance, has become the generic term for, or synonymous with, a general class of products or services, usually against the intentions of the trademark's owner.
Lego Duplo is a core product range of the construction toy Lego by The LEGO Group, designed for children from 1+1⁄2 to 5 years old. Duplo bricks are twice the size of traditional Lego bricks, making them easier to handle and less likely to be swallowed by younger children. Despite their size, they are still compatible with traditional Lego bricks.
Tyco Toys was an American toy manufacturer. It was acquired by Mattel in 1997.
The history of Lego began in 1932, when Ole Kirk Christiansen who owned a Danish carpentry workshop that at first only produced furniture started making wooden toys and later named the new toy company Lego in 1934. Later when injection molding was introduced to Denmark after World War II Ole Kirk bought an injection molding machine for the company to make toys in 1947. That same year Kirk and his son obtained samples of plastic interlocking bricks which inspired the later lego bricks created in 1949. The brick and lego system continued to be modified with new molds and colours being added and removed over the decades. Lego still continues into the 21st century as a popular and very profitable line of construction toys and related products and services, with a significant impact on various areas in popular culture. Despite its expansion, the company remains privately held.
A construction set is a set of standardized pieces that allow for the construction of a variety of different models. Construction sets are generally marketed as toys. One very popular brand of construction set toys is Lego.
Lego A/S is a Danish toy production company based in Billund, Denmark. It manufactures Lego-branded toys, consisting mostly of interlocking plastic bricks. The Lego Group has also built several amusement parks around the world, each known as Legoland, and operates numerous retail stores.
The Tetris Company, Inc. (TTC) is the manager and licensor for the Tetris brand to third parties. It is based in Nevada and is owned by Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers. The company is the exclusive licensee of Tetris Holding LLC, the company that owns Tetris rights worldwide.
Kirkbi AG v. Ritvik Holdings Inc., popularly known as the Lego Case, is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. The Court upheld the constitutionality of section 7(b) of the Trade-marks Act which prohibits the use of confusing marks, as well, on a second issue it was held that the doctrine of functionality applied to unregistered trade-marks.
Lego Star Wars is a Lego theme and multimedia franchise revolving around the Star Wars media franchise created by George Lucas. Part of the theme are, next to, over 883 Lego construction toy sets 1328 Lego minifigures, an eponymous video game series, containing six games, multiple computer animated short films and TV series.
Loc Blocs was a plastic block construction toy set. Never reaching the popularity of Lego bricks, they were marketed in the 1970s and 1980s by Entex Industries and manufactured in Japan as Dia Block by Kawada Co. which still produces sets to this day. They were also sold by Sears under their house brand Brix Blox.
Mega Brands Inc. is a Canadian children's toy company that is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Mattel. Mega Bloks, a line of construction set toys, is its most popular product. Its other brands include Mega Construx, Mega Puzzles, Board Dudes and Rose Art. The company distributes a wide range of construction toys, puzzles, and craft-based products.
A trademark is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others. The trademark owner can be an individual, business organization, or any legal entity. A trademark may be located on a package, a label, a voucher, or on the product itself. Trademarks used to identify services are sometimes called service marks.
Cobi is a Polish toy company with its headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. The company was founded in 1987, producing puzzles and board games. In 1992, it started producing building blocks with an interlocking stud and tube system, compatible with Lego blocks. Due to their popularity, the company switched to mostly producing building block sets.
KRE-O is a line of construction toys manufactured by South Korea–based Oxford and marketed by Hasbro. Kre-O was released in stores in Fall 2011. The name Kre-O comes from the Latin word creo, which means "I create".
A Lego clone is a line or brand of children's construction blocks which is mechanically compatible with Lego brand blocks, but is produced by another manufacturer. The blocks were originally patented by The Lego Group in 1961 as "toy building bricks", and the company has since remained dominant in this market. Some competitors have moved to take advantage of Lego brand recognition by advertising their own products as compatible with Lego, with statements such as "compatible with leading building bricks".
Lego Friends is a product range of Lego construction toys designed primarily for girls. Launched in 2012, the theme introduced "mini-doll" figures, which are about the same size as traditional Lego minifigures but are more detailed and realistic. The original cast consisted of Andrea, Olivia, Stephanie, Mia and Emma. The theme was rebooted and relaunched in January 2023 to focus on a more diverse cast of characters, the main cast now consisting of Aliya, Nova, Zac, Liann, Paisley, Leo, Autumn and Olly,
Guangdong Loongon Animation & Culture Co., Ltd. (广东小白龙动漫文化股份有限公司), often referred to as Loongon, is a Chinese children's toy manufacturer based in Guangdong and founded in 2003. Loongon and its family of brands, including Lepin and Cogo are known for producing Lego-compatible brick sets. Loongon is publicly listed as of 2014 as stock 831015 on the Chinese stock exchange known as the National Equities Exchange and Quotations.
Hilary "Harry" Fisher Page was an English toy maker and inventor of Self-Locking Building Bricks, the predecessor of Lego bricks. He founded the Kiddicraft toy company.
Building blocks are modular construction parts, usually made of plastic, which can be assembled in a form-fit manner. The basic components are usually cuboid-shaped, cylindrically studded at the top in a grid pattern, hollow-bodied at the bottom and smooth at the sides. The structured upper surface interacts by friction and positive locking with the correspondingly negative lower surface of other clamping components, so that complex designs can be assembled. The design allows the parts to be connected with compressive force and the blocks to be clamped with plastic pins.
 | This toy-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |