EU Court Of Justice Says The Shape Of Rubik's Cube Should Not Be Trademarked

from the form-over-function dept

You all should be familiar with a Rubik's Cube, the three-dimensional puzzle toy that for some reason your grandmother kept on her coffee table to frustrate you while she watched Matlock. This invention of the 1970s still enjoys widespread popularity, with hundreds of millions of them being sold every year. The toy has been patented for some time, but ten years ago, a British company that manages the intellectual property rights for the toy also applied for trademark protection on the cube's design in the EU. The reason for this should be obvious: patent protections last for limited amounts of time, while trademark rights exist essentially in perpetuity, so long as it's actively used in the marketplace. It's an end-around to patent law designed to lock up a monopoly.

But, in the case of the Rubik's Cube, it didn't work, as the European Union Court of Justice has correctly determined that the trademark applied for by Seven Towers was for a functional and technical solution, not one of branding. German competitor Simba Toys had challenged the trademark, and it won.

ECJ judges agreed with Simba Toys' arguments. Their decision is final and cannot be appealed.

"In examining whether registration ought to be refused on the ground that shape involved a technical solution, EUIPO and the General Court should also have taken into account non-visible functional elements represented by that shape, such as its rotating capability," they said.

EUIPO will now have to issue a new decision based on the ECJ judgment.

Representatives from Rubik's Brand Ltd. were quick to respond, breathlessly wringing their hands over how this decision will obviously destroy the brands and innovation within the toy market.

Rubik's Brand Ltd's president David Kremer said he was baffled that the court ruled that functionality or a technical solution is implicit in the trademark.

"This judgment sets a damaging precedent for companies wishing to innovate and create strong brands and distinctive marks within the EU, and is not what European lawmakers intended when they legislated for 3D trademarks," he said.

But we can set the Chicken Little shit to the side, here. The damaging precedent would have been if the court instead allowed companies to treat trademark so disdainfully as a technical end-around to patent law. There is a reason why patents have set time periods for protection and getting around them by trying to apply trademark law to that which is clearly in the realm of patents would do the very thing Kremer claims to fear: prevent innovation. After all, given how overprotective companies have become when it comes to their trademarks, it's easy to see how Rubik's would respond to any other toy maker attempting to make a toy involving anything resembling a rotating cube. This was about monopolizing a market, not innovation.

It's good to see a high court slap down attempts like this, regardless.

Filed Under: cjeu, cubes, eu, functional, puzzles, rubik's cube
Companies: seven towers, simba toy's

DailyDirt: How Quickly Can You Solve A Rubik's Cube?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The original Rubik's cube puzzle was invented in 1974, but there were similar puzzles made before -- such as a 2x2x2 cube puzzle and a spherical 3x3x3 puzzle. The patents for these toys have expired, but people playing with these puzzles are still going strong. Speedcubing or speedsolving is a competitive sport, and there are variations on the activity to solve it blindfolded or with feet only or with just one hand. If you have a scrambled Rubik's cube sitting in drawer somewhere, maybe you'll be able to buy a robot to solve it for you soon.

• The fastest machine for solving a Rubik's cube can currently do it in less than 2 seconds. This bot beats the previous non-human Rubik's cube-solve bot (aka The Cubestormer 3) which holds a Guinness World Record of just 3.253 seconds, and it has solved a scrambled Rubik's cube in less than 1 second. [url]
• Speedcubers (that's apparently what you call people who solve Rubik's cubes in seconds) are getting slightly faster at solving this puzzle and have broken the 5 second barrier. Lucas Etter, a 14yo, solved a cube in 4.904 seconds. Clearly, there must be a physical limit to how fast a cube can be solved. How fast can anyone or anything rotate a face of a Rubik's cube? Multiply that time by 20 (though maybe there's a way to rotate multiple faces simultaneously) or so. [url]
• There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible Rubik's cube positions. The minimum number of turns required to solve a cube from an arbitrary starting position is known as "God's number" by some folks, and it was established to be 20 turns in 2010. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: cubestormer 3, god's number, guinness world record, lucas etter, puzzles, robotics, rubik's cube, speedcuber, speedcubing, speedsolving, toys

eBay Shutting Down Rubik's Cube Knockoff Sales Due To Patent Infringement Claim (Not From Rubik's Maker)

from the keeping-track dept

Bram Cohen, who's known for doing quite a bit of 3-dimensional puzzle design, alerts us to the news of eBay shutting down a bunch of auctions over some Dayan Guhong and Lingyun puzzles. The Dayan Guhong and Lingyun puzzles are, basically, quite similar to the traditional Rubik's Cube, but designed to work a bit easier. You can see a video explaining the Guhong, which shows how it's faster than a traditional Rubik's cube.

Now, there are two separate, but equally interesting points of discussion here. The first is that eBay is apparently getting into the patent enforcement business. This case involved the use of eBay's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program, which is usually used by trademark owners to get counterfeits and such removed from eBay. I was unaware of it being used over patents until this case, and that's a lot more troubling. A trademark claim is a lot easier (though, still not perfectly easy in many cases) to judge. A patent claim is a lot more difficult. Is eBay really claiming to be able to determine if a product on eBay infringes on someone else's patent? And then is willing to kill auctions because of it? Furthermore, if the patent holder is really upset, shouldn't it be going after those who are actually selling the cubes in question, rather than having eBay get in the middle?

The other issue is that there's even a patent for this at all. The patent in question, 7,600,756, is somewhat well known in puzzle circles, in that it covers similar cube puzzles that go beyond the traditional Rubik's 3x3x3 all the way up to 11x11x11. Even if you believe that everything from 4x4x4 to 11x11x11 are unique and patentable, it does seem to be a bit of a stretch to claim that the 3x3x3 is patentable. There are some differences in how the patent holder, Panayotis Verdes, designed his 3x3x3 from the original Rubik's, but it was a design innovation (making certain parts spherical instead of cylindrical) that many toy puzzle designers came up with independently at about the same time (which would suggest "obviousness" and thus make it not patentable). Related to all of that, the company holding this patent, V-Cube, is not even making a 3x3x3, though it is making a variety of other cubes. So it's basically trying to kill off the sales of the standard 3x3x3 cubes, even though they don't compete with V-Cube.

Of course, the history of Rubik's Cube is full of patent battles as well. It all kind of makes you wonder, what's wrong with just letting puzzle makers come up with cool puzzles and then letting them compete in the market?

Filed Under: patents, puzzles, rubik's cube
Companies: dayan, ebay, v-cube