Comment by Freak_NL 2 days ago
Is this conjecture or actually done? Bricklink Buyers expect Lego bricks, including the trademark on each stud, so any shop sending anything not produced by the Lego Group, but with the trademark on it, would be sending actual counterfeit products, not third party bricks.
Buying actual Lego bricks produced in whichever Lego factory and reselling them is not counterfeiting.
i highly doubt that. i have never seen a counterfeit lego set with an actual lego logo. even in china that would not be legal. someone would have to specifically target bricklink shops to sell such bricks.
if you get fake bricks you might not open a support case to get the bricks replaced, but you would complain and report that shop. with enough reports coming in someone would look into that. so i feel that this is unlikely to happen. at the worst case it's someone clueless, mixing in alternative brands by accident. but i expect someone doing that intentionally would be shut down quickly by reputation only. i mean, shops get closed simply because they get to many complaints about taking to long to ship.
see my other comment on how unlikely it is that someone is able to sell that. they can fake the bricks, but faking a complete set with a box and instructions is much harder and even in china that can't be sold openly. you would have to distribute the bricks just like you distribute counterfeit money. how likely is that? there would have to be a black market for that. the only way to sell bricks without packaging in volume is on sites like ebay. but even there you probably can't sell that much fast enough to make it profitable without anyone noticing.
> i highly doubt that. i have never seen a counterfeit lego set with an actual lego logo
Question: do the legit brick manufacturers equal the quality of Lego? I picked up a Lego-compatible set years ago, and it didn't quite fit with Lego blocks (I'm assuming due to poorer tolerances).
I admit I have no knowledge here, but if 100% compatibility is possible, faking the logo doesn't seem like a high bar. If you were buying fake individual bricks (not sets), how would you even know?
the quality is generally equal, but there is more variety i suppose. what you describe sounds like extremely bad quality. if you can share the brand then maybe someone can give more insights.
producing bricks with a LEGO logo is a low bar. selling them is more difficult. you need to sell a lot of them to make it worth it. in order to sell them at scale on bricklink you would need to target a lot of stores. how would you do that without the storeowners knowing? a single store would not sell enough without being noticed.
If a store actually delivers counterfeit bricks, returning them is not relevant. Bricklink stores rely heavily on their reputation, so anyone pulling a stunt like this would have to start over and over again.
> I could also imagine that you can buy china-manufactured parts that carry the lego logo.
It wouldn't gain the manufacturer anything, but cost them in terms of liability. It would also mean they can't sell bricks made with such moulds to any party which very much does not want get into a trademark dispute with the Lego Group. So it is very, very unlikely.
There are plenty of cowboys out there who produce sets which look way too much like Lego sets (boxes and all), and which violate the trademark by having logos which sort of look like the Lego logo if you squint, but bricks with the literal Lego logo on them would blow away any sort of defence based on plausible deniability.
It is mere conjecture, I have no datapoints to support this. I would assume, since Bricklink sends worldwide, that you would not open a support case when buying a couple of $ worth of parts if they are non-original. The effort of return shippment probably not worth it. I could also imagine that you can buy china-manufactured parts that carry the lego logo.