rubik's cube terrorism

Back in the 1980s - Rubik's Cube was my own form of mental terrorism.  I spent hours and days working on solving that infernal puzzle and all the follow-on Rubik's-like puzzles (the snake, the cone, the orb etc.) 

Flash forward to 2004, according to YahooNews, a small store owner in Oregon was forced to remove a competing product, the Magic Cube, from her store shelves by agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  According to the agents, the Magic Cube infringed upon the trademark rights of Seven Towns Limited, the exclusive licensee.

Hmmmm..... Department of Homeland Security is working for Rubik's Cube?

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint filed in the agency's intellectual property rights center in Washington, D.C.

"One of the things that our agency's responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation's financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications," she said.

Patent infringement outside Hungary isn't possible on the initial invention:

Rubik applied for his Hungarian patent in January 1975 and left his invention with a small toy making cooperative in Budapest. The patent approval finally came in early 1977 and the first Cubes appeared at the end of 1977. By this time, Rubik was married.

Rubik's Cube � was first called the Magic Cube (Buvuos Kocka) in Hungary. The puzzle had not been patented internationally within a year of the original patent. Patent law then prevented the possibility of an international patent. Ideal Toy wanted at least a recognizable name to copyright; of course, that arrangement put Rubik in the spotlight because the Magic Cube was renamed after its inventor.

So how about trademark infringement?  According to the USPTO website, Atico International USA owns trademark registration No. 2,671,747 for MAGIC CUBE when used on manipulative puzzles.  Logical Games (original worldwide distributor for the cube game) appears to have allowed their registered trademark for "THE MAGIC CUBE" to become expired as of Sept. 1990.

Finally, what about copyright infringement? According to the Copyright Office, Registration Number VA-237-786 exists for "Rubik's Magic graphic elements" and was registered as a copyright in Sept., 1986.  This might be the basis for the Dept. of Homeland Security's actions -- a copyright infringement action based upon the Magic Cube's copying of Rubik's Cube features and sculptural qualities.

For more information on Rubik's Cube - about.com has a whole section devoted to the maddening device.

UPDATE:  Legal Pings blog has some additional information on this story and argues that the trademark rights in and to Rubik's Cube are the basis for the enforcement action. The only U.S. trademark registration for "Rubik's Cube" is registration number 1,243,974 for the word mark "Rubik's Cube" (i.e. the words, not the design of the cube a la tradedress or product configuration).

From Seven Towns' website:

Rubik� and Rubik�s Cubes� are registered trademarks throughout the world of Seven Towns Limited. Seven Towns Limited is the exclusive worldwide licensee of copyright in the Rubik�s Cube puzzle and the registered proprietor of European Community Trade Mark registrations in the images of the Rubik's Cube puzzle and the puzzle itself.

UPDATE II: Dennis at Patently Obvious has an extended post on this issue as well and finds that Seven Towns does own a U.S. trademark Registration No. 2,285,794 which is a design mark with a description:

The mark consists of a black cube having nine color patches on each of its six faces with the color patches on each face being the same and consisting of the colors red, white, blue, green, yellow and orange. The drawing is lined for the colors red and green. The remaining colors -- white, blue, yellow, and orange -- do not appear in the drawing, but are claimed as a feature of the mark.

Dennis also has a nice overview of trade dress protection and its limits as applied to functional aspects that have been previously patented.