Is The LEGO Group: Publish Or Protect?

Case: the LEGO Group: Publish or Protect?

Publish, Patent or Trade secret?

Introduction:

The LEGO Group are maintaining their competitive advantage through two main direction which are having more intelligence modular design and product introduction, such as new product line and having manufacturing process innovation that can reduce cost, shorten manufacturing cycle and improve the product quality. For manufacturing innovation LEGO are introducing new technology into their process. The project are called “The Next Generation Molding Platform” which contain two significant manufacturing technology, controlling molding process by electric drive machine and introducing new additive manufacturing method into molding.
These technologies are
Trade secret is relative cheaper when compare with making a patent but it is more risky than using patent. There are many cases that employee “steal” company core technology or secret and sell it to competitor. For example, cases of Ex-CME Group Programmer Pleads Guilty to Stealing Trade Secrets” , “China to Put Rio Tinto Employees on Trial” ,Two Chinese Schools Linked to Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets …… The problem are more serious in LEGO situation, as LEGO are facing emerging market, employee have low loyalty to company and company ‘s manufacturing plants are highly concentrated to specific region. Those factor make leakage of trade secret easy. Once competitor firm provide considerable advantage, employee may steal the core technology and join the
The strength of the LEGO business based on the success product series, such as LEGO friends, duplo, city, Chima , star war, Super heros , Minecraft and …… Also, LEGO have developed video games and TECHNICE series. LEGO developed a wide variety of product series in order to increase the market share and target different customer. The successes of LEGO business are based on its creative and innovative product. Thus, the income patenting and licensing of technology are not the core business of LEGO Corporation. The choice of selecting public disclosure does not affect the income of LEGO Corporation. Also, once the technology is being public disclosure, competitor cannot patent it to affect the manufacture of LEGO’s product. It is a passive move to protect their