Tag: Lepin

LEGO Wins Final Decisions in Major Intellectual Property Lawsuits Against Lepin

January 20, 2020 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 0 Comments

LEGO has announced that they have won final decisions in in major intellectual property lawsuits against Lepin. The Guangzhou courts have decided to uphold all the rulings of the infringement cases back from 2018. This means that Shantou Meizhi Model Co., Ltd will have to pay LEGO a total of RMB 4.7 million in damages and have to make a public apology. This is only a minor setback to Lepin as they have already changed company names to continue producing counterfeit products.

The LEGO Group wins final decisions in major intellectual property lawsuits against Lepin manufacturer in China

The LEGO Group announced today that it has received favourable final decisions from the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court against the appeals raised by defendants of multiple intellectual property infringement cases in China. It marks a significant legal victory for the LEGO Group to combat against imitators.

The court decided to uphold all of the first-instance rulings on the 18 copyright infringement and one unfair competition cases, which were handed down in favour of the LEGO Group in November 2018. These second-instance decisions are final and have entered into legal effect immediately upon issuance.

In these cases, Shantou Meizhi Model Co., Ltd. and its affiliates are liable of manufacturing and selling the infringing Lepin products. The 18 LEGO® sets and corresponding LEGO minifigures at dispute, are ruled as artworks protected under China Copyright Law belonging to the LEGO Group. Unauthorized copies of the same constitute copyright infringement, said the court.

The LEGO NINJAGO, NEXO KNIGHTS, and LEGENDS OF

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Lepin Factories Raided and Boss Arrested

April 25, 2019 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 0 Comments

Depending on what time zone you’re in, this is either some early morning news or late night news. The Shanghai Police has announced on their Weibo that they have successfully raided a few Lepin factories and the boss, surnamed Li, has been arrested. If you didn’t know, LEGO has been taking legal action against the company for almost three years and even though they supposedly won an infringement case against them last year, Lepin was still producing counterfeit sets.

According to the post, there were three warehouses raided, four people arrested, including Li, and police confiscated 90 production molds and 630,000 finished products ready to be sold which equated to more than 200 million yuan (~$30 mil USD). You can check out more images of the raid in the link above.

Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

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The LEGO Group Announces Infringement Case Win Against LEPIN

November 5, 2018 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 0 Comments

LEGO has officially announced the results of the lawsuit against LEPIN in China. The Chinese courts have ruled in favor of The LEGO Group against four companies who infringed on multiple copyrights. According to the press release, the four companies, Shantou Meizhi Model Co., et al, are accountable for copying artwork for 18 LEGO sets and minifigures as well as using unfair competition acts. The courts have ruled that those companies will pay LEGO about RMB 4.5 million in damages. Check out the full press release below.

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New Chinese Brick Company Producing AFOL Sets

April 9, 2017 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 34 Comments

Here’s something that has popped up on my feed and also readers emailing in about it but I questioned whether I should post about it or not. You may have heard of a few well-known builders in the LEGO community like The Arvo Brothers, Firas Abu-Jaber, Paul Boratko (CrowKillers), and Bangoo H, many of which have been featured on The Brothers Brick and other LEGO sites. Their LEGO builds are an envy of many builders who have tried to replicate themselves or take inspiration from.

The 29th Guangzhou Toy & Hobby Fair kicked off yesterday and there’s a Chinese “new” brick company who has appeared to be making sets based on the designs of some of the builders I’ve named above. In a post on Facebook, there are images of a company called Xingbao (星堡) who is owned by Meizi Model (美致模型), which is the same company that owns LEPIN, at the convention displaying some of the sets based off of the AFOL designs including The Arvo Brother’s Kaneda’s Bike and Alien, Bangoo H’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky music box, Fira’s Volkswagen Beetle, Ford GT, and Rolls Royce Springfield Roadster, and Paul’s Balisong supercar, just to name a few. It also appears that some of the designers have confirmed to have licensed their models out to the company.

This new company is essentially helping AFOLs who want their models become easier to obtain by their followers who do not have time to BrickLink the parts or whatnot. This whole thing … Continue

The Brick Fan Expanding to LEPIN Set Reviews

April 1, 2017 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 14 Comments

There’s a point in time where you have to take a step back and see where you are in life and at this point, I’ve decided to expand The Brick Fan. A few people have asked me whether I would do this or not but I think it’s about time that I do so. I’ve decided to go ahead and also review LEPIN sets.

We’ve all seen a company called LEPIN which many call a knockoff company. Essentially, they take official LEGO sets and make bootleg sets out of them with subpar plastics. There aren’t that many reviewers of LEPIN sets and I feel that I should take this opportunity to test them out and let the public know how I feel about them. I’ve set up a website called The LEPIN Fan for my the reviews and I encourage you to head on over and check it out.

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Lepin Moves from LEGO Sets to LEGO Fan Designs

October 7, 2016 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 11 Comments

The past day or so, I’ve gotten a lot of emails regarding this piece of “news.” I saw some images on Facebook yesterday morning about it but brushed it off because I didn’t want to advertise it. A lot of people who saw the same images are outraged that this is going on and wanted me to write about it and maybe LEGO can see what’s happening.

If you didn’t read about it a few weeks ago, LEGO filed a civil action against LEGO bootleg company Lepin and the cases have been accepted in Chinese courts for further judgment. Well since Lepin is having some legal issues copying official LEGO sets, they’ve now turned to LEGO fans for inspiration for their next sets.

As you can see above, they’ve launched their Creators line and pretty much copied the Barnes & Noble and Starbucks Store project by wooootles on LEGO Ideas. Not only that, they have more sets copied shown on the back of the box such as the International Hotel by lgorlando and the Apple Square University by Pete Stege.

One thing to note is that when you submit your project to LEGO Ideas, you “give rise to any intellectual property right interest, hereunder copyright, patent rights, design rights etc., you hereby assign all rights worldwide to the content generated by you to LEGO” as stated in the Terms of Service so basically LEGO owns the designs of the projects for three years after it is no longer considered for production.

We all know what’s … Continue

The LEGO Group Files Civil Action Against Lepin

September 22, 2016 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 36 Comments

You may heard or seen pictures of a Chinese company called Lepin reproducing bootleg copies of various LEGO sets and selling them on the market for a fraction of the normal retail price. People who aren’t LEGO enthusiasts may not immediate know the difference between the Lepin clones and LEGO as they have similar logo fonts and packaging but us fans know it very well.

There’s news coming out of the LEGO Ambassador Network earlier this morning that The LEGO Group has filed civil actions in China against Lepin and the cases have been accepted in Chinese courts. Whether or not TLG will win these cases remain to be seen. You can check out the whole post below.

Dear RLUG Ambassadors,

We would like to confirm that the LEGO Group have recently filed civil actions in China against the manufacturer and distributor of LEPIN/乐拼 branded construction toys. Our cases have been accepted by Chinese courts and are now pending for trials. We expect the 1st instance decision to be handed down in approximately one years’ time. Please note that LEPIN will not be legally barred from marketing and selling its products while the case is being heard by the courts.

We deeply appreciate and share the LEGO community’s concern and frustration about passing-off or imitation of LEGO® products. We are committed to do whatever necessary to protect the LEGO brand and products against undue exploitation, and to minimize the risk of consumers being misled via improper use of LEGO Group intellectual property assets.

We want to

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