- Joined
- Jul 10, 2017
If your trade secrets are posted all over the internet..then they are no longer trade secrets.
The problem LEGO runs into is in the Middle ground. They have to show pictures and product samples to the vendors a few months out from the release dates in order for everybody to generate sales orders and get stock on shelves for the holiday season. LEGO generally has 2 release cycles per year. Summer and Winter. These pics are from this years Winter release. Where they run into trouble is the shear speed at which Chinese Bootleggers can copy and release clones of their product. Lepin is or was the worst. LEGO actually won a lawsuit against them in Chinese Courts last year. And the Police raided and shut down the factory. In April But reports are they are already back up.
Some pics of the squalid factory there
LEGO has to show pics and sets to merchants at the trade fairs, but they try to do so under heavily restricted NDA. The only way they can generally beat the bootleggers is to keep the pictures confidential until a week or so from release. The Disney Lucasfilms stuff has more complications because Lucasfilms enforces draconian street dates regarding information release. And that’s not Disney, it is how Lucasfilms has always been.
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