14 defendants have been prosecuted, with a total amount of 1.1 billion yuan involved! Another counterfeit LEGO building block "Bole" has been found to be infringing | Company | LEGO
Without the permission of LEGO, the Chen brothers established a company, recruited employees, established a clear division of labor and hierarchical imitation and sales industry chain, and produced infringing building blocks such as "Bole". The involved amount reached 1.1 billion yuan. Recently, the People's Procuratorate of Huangpu District, Shanghai, prosecuted 14 defendants in the case on charges of copyright infringement and selling infringing copies.
In June 2021, the public security organ received a report that there were two stores on the e-commerce platform selling almost identical building block toys with different models of the Lego brand. After investigation, it was found that the building blocks of both online stores were purchased from the same company. This company and the toy factory it supplies were both registered and established by the Chen brothers, specializing in the production and sale of toy building blocks at the time of the incident. Seeing that LEGO building blocks are selling well in the market, they started thinking of counterfeiting.
Without authorization from LEGO, Chen and others replicated the authentic LEGO building block toy particles, assembly instructions, and packaging patterns in a 1:1 ratio through mold making, 3D modeling, and other methods. They also marked their own trademarks such as "Bole", "Leyi", and "Tank" on the packaging boxes for sale both domestically and internationally. Because it does not require independent design and the production cost is not high, infringing LEGO toys are priced at only a few tens to a few hundred yuan and sell very well in the market.
In fact, as early as 2017, LEGO discovered that the Chen brothers had engaged in unfair competition and filed a civil lawsuit against the company they registered. On September 28 of the same year, the court made a first instance judgment, confirming that the toy products produced and sold by Chen brothers constituted unfair competition behavior, and ordered the two brothers to pay compensation and reasonable expenses totaling more than 220000 yuan.
However, the Chen brothers, who were aware of the infringement of producing and selling pirated LEGO toys, have not stopped after losing the lawsuit and receiving compensation. They relocated the design and sales departments of the company, as well as other departments related to infringing toy products, from the company headquarters to prevent investigation, and hired employees to continue producing and selling infringing LEGO toys. The wives, children, son-in-law, and other family members of the two brothers also participated in various aspects of the imitation, design, and sales of infringing toys.
In early August 2022, the public security organs arrested some of the defendants in this series of cases and seized over 1.6 million boxes of various LEGO infringing toys, as well as molds and other items used to make counterfeit LEGO block toys, in multiple locations such as the company's warehouse. After appraisal, the block toys involved in the case that were sent for inspection were compared and confirmed through outer packaging, assembly toys, and instructions, and are basically the same as the block sets that LEGO Company enjoys copyright, forming a replication relationship. In the end, the procuratorial organs determined that there were over 1400 infringing toys and over 1.1 billion yuan in illegal business involved in the case.
Due to the large number of people involved in the case, the procuratorial organs actively guided the public security organs to comprehensively collect evidence, improve the evidence chain, and determine the scope of personnel prosecution based on the business characteristics and personnel structure of the involved companies in the early stage. During the process of handling cases, accurately determine the position and role of the personnel involved in the case, and actively implement the criminal policy of combining leniency and severity. In the face of some suspect 'refusal to make a statement and dishonest confession, guide the investigation to combine with self supplementary investigation, further consolidate the evidence foundation of the case, and finally effectively accuse the crime. At present, 14 people have been prosecuted in 4 cases of this series, and 16 people have been prosecuted in 3 cases.
