Here’s something that’s interesting coming out of the LEGO Dimensions subreddit. Apparently a company called FigureFun LLC is suing LEGO and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for patent infringement. The company states two patents, 7,001,276 and 7,338,377, are infringing on their rights and are seeking damages.
Users in the subreddit quickly debunked that FigureFun is using a practice called patent trolling. This is when a company obtains the rights to patents to make a profit from licensing or through the courts which is what is happening here.
According to public records, FigureFun LLC was set up on April 4, 2016, a whole year after LEGO Dimensions was introduced so this lawsuit is coming in pretty late. It’ll be interesting to see the outcome of this lawsuit, if any.
You can read up on the whole lawsuit here.
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I’m no lawyer, but this looks like a company trying to get money off of Lego because Lego came up with a technology to their own. While i may be wrong, this looks like a publicity stunt to make money and ruin Lego’s reputation.
It’s to make money, it happens all the time with big businesses to try to get them to settle.
John Oliver did a really excellent piece on Patent Trolling on Last Week Tonight a couple of years ago which demonstrates how this is done. It’s even filed in the same state given as an example.
You can have patents dating back many years. Though i would question why they did not go after Disney Infinity or other similar games.
The recent end of Lego Dimensions certainly wont look good in courts – it can be viewed as an acceptance of guilt.
But it isn’t over yet.
Does not matter. It’s clear the theme is ending and the timing matches with the legal action occuring so it’s still akward for Lego in that regard. It’s the same with when Bionicle ended, it unofficially ended straight after the release of the 2016 summer sets – but they waited till after the release of the netflix show’s second half before announcing it – even though they had clearly had cancelled production on the theme months before given how JTO ended.