Sanity in IP: Lego Trademark Edition

Here is some sanity on trademark:

Lego has failed in its bid to register the shape of its play bricks as trade marks. A European court said that the brick shape was functional and that it had to be that shape to operate as it did, so could not be registered as a trade mark.

The Court of First Instance (CFI) of the European Communities backed a 2004 decision of the EU's trade marks office the Office for the Harmonisation of the Internal Market (OHIM) to cancel Lego's trade mark registration.

You heard right....The Lego Corporation was trying to trademark a brick.