Backup of David's Google+ Posts

Aren't patents only 19 years??

I would never consider buying knockoff bricks, just like I would never consider a knockoff Steadicam. I believe in rewarding the original innovator.

The original innovator of Legos has been dead for over 50 years; I'm pretty sure he doesn't care.

There's no evidence online that Markus L. Noga is dead, certainly not over 50 years ago. Besides we changed the name from LegOS to brickOS.

Oh, did you mean "Lego bricks"?

An aside, if I key off the word "knockoff", then I'm like Mike, too. I'd buy improvements to the invention, but I generally turn away from inferior reproductions of the invention.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ole_Kirk_Christiansen The original inventor is very dead.

Yeah, that's what I get. Sorry, Hiromi, I wasn't being serious when I pretended that you actually meant "LegOS" because you couldn't possibly have meant "Lego bricks" when you used the verboten word, "Legos." I certainly didn't actually think Christiansen was still alive. (Although there's a little troll in me that wants to pretend so.)

Well, let me be a bit more specific. Florence Knoll is quite dead. Herman Miller still sells her sofa design. There are numerous reproductions. I would rather have the real thing, because I know that it will be a quality product true to the original design, rather than a superficial copy.

Charles and Ray Eames are also quite dead, and once again HM sells their designs under license with the estate. I would prefer one of those to a reproduction.

Now, if somebody took one of those designs, and actually improved upon it, it would be different. For example, the Eames Lounge Chair is beautiful, but it's designed for people from 1955 who are not typically 6' tall. The European company Vitra builds a scaled-up chair under license with the Eames estate, but it's not available in the US.