Well thats it basically, The building block toy… I wonder because I saw that Car commercial again with “Mega Blocks” and thought it was highly in poor taste not to use LEGO.
This assumes that LEGO was the first such toy, I hope this is the case.
They can sue. They have (in Canada, since Mega Bloks are made by a Canadian company). They lost.
The article has more details. Essentially, LEGO lost because they were trying to claim the Mega Bloks copied the unique look-and-feel of the pattern of bumps on top of the blocks. But that design was originally purely functional, so it was claimed in patents that have since expired. Allowing someone to claim that a patented idea is also a unique look-and-feel would undermine the whole patent system, in that they would never expire.
Just noting that Lego was granted leave to appeal the Canadian decision.
If they had used Legos in the ad, then Lego might have had grounds for suit. I’m assuming they made up a fake block because that avoids any legal problems.
But the larger question, really, is why you think Lego should sue or why you think Lego should have grounds for suit.
The most common grounds for this kind of a suit would be some kind of intellectual property claim. Let’s go through them one by one:
Copyright law protects original works of creative expression, such as literary works, musical works, dramatic works, pantomimes and choreographic works, pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works, motion pictures and other audiovisual works, sound recordings, architectural works. Lego blocks are none of these things. They are blocks, toys. They are not original works of creative expression. Even if Lego was the first to come up with that particular design of toy blocks, the reason for that design was functionality. If something is functional (speaking broadly), then the law doesn’t allow you do protect it as a creative work.
Trademark law protects a mark that identifies the origin of goods. Well, Lego does have a protected mark: “Lego.” If someone else uses that mark in connection with the kinds of goods that Lego makes, then, yes, Lego has grounds for suit. But, you’ll note, this is a reason to avoid saying “Lego” unless you are, in fact, the Lego company. Related to trademarks is trade dress law, which basically allows you to claim the entire shape and “look” of the goods as the trademark. However, once again, you can’t claim trade dress when the design is functional.
Patent law protects ideas regarding useful things. Ah, here we go. Lego blocks can fit into this category. However, patent law is very limited and, as a previous poster said, the patents in question have expired. In our legal and commercial system it’s very important that patents expire because, although you want the inventor of something useful to get a certain degree of benefit, you don’t want to grant him or her a perpetual monopoly. We consider it more important that competitors be allowed to compete directly with another company’s products.
They didn’t. I haven’t seen the commercial in question, but Mega Blocks are a real toy built along the LEGO design.
The only difference between Lego and Mega Blocks is that Mega don’t have Lego pressed into the top of each pip. They’re designed to fit with legos (it’s part of their marketting, too.).
Well, the knockoffs aren’t quite as durable and don’t hold together quite as tightly. On the other hand, they’re cheaper.
The knock-offs, really, are quite crappy; downright unacceptable if you’re into lego.
That’s rather the opposite of my experience with them. Mega Blocks hold every bit as well as Lego, and stand up to such things as being stepped on, or pried apart after idiot brothers glue them together a lot better.
I didnt mean to ask “Can Lego sue the Car Manufacturer (Honda, I think)”
I just wonder if Honda didnt want to put up the big bucks for Lego blocks.
Charging Honda lots of money to feature Lego in Honda’s ads wouldn’t make much sense, since Lego would have gotten nearly as much benefit without the expense of producing the ad. In fact, they should have offered to make it as easy as possible (providing their experts to make the models, etc.), or even paid Honda to be included. I’d guess that Mega may have made Honda a better offer for just that reason.
Actually there is more to this than meets the eye.
Volvo Cars signed a deal with Lego to be the offical car of legoland. This agreement was signed before I saw the Honda ad for the first time. Lego then built a solid Lego Volvo XC 90 (check the link for some cool pictures)
As near as I can tell from the ad the Honda is CGI, the Volvo is real. I got to see the Volvo XC 90 in person back in April. When they opened the driver’s door (yes the door opens, the wheels turn and the whole thing rolls) The model makers at Lego hung a pair of giant fuzzy dice made from Legos, from the rearview mirror. 
So now the question becomes does anybody have a cause of action here?
I don’t see any. What facts do you think would give rise to any cause of action?
I don’t know, I was wondering. You have one car maker signs a deal with the company that makes the most recognizable brand of building blocks in the world. The agreement is for advertising both company’s products one a building block and the other an SUV.
Then another car company comes in and produces an ad for their SUV that uses CGI showing it being “built” out of very similar building blocks.
Could this cause confusion in the public’s mind, and is that confusion actionable? 
Asking whether this causes confusion is not the first step in a trademark infringement action. First you have to ask whether there is a protectable right here somewhere. You’d have to argue that “a commercial showing a car made out of toy blocks” is a protectable mark of some kind. That’s going to be a real uphill battle. First of all, it’s probabaly not going to be a registered mark; you’d have to protect it as an unregistered mark. Then you have to show that the company has actually used this idea of a car made with blocks to mark its products, which I’m pretty sure it hasn’t.
Then you have to show “secondary meaning”; that is, in the mind of the public, showing a car made out of toy blocks is already associated in their minds with a particular manufacturer.
The only other thing I can think of is a copyright infringement action and that’s not going to be easy either. Did they actually copy the commercial? Now, remember, you can’t protect ideas or storylines. You have to show “substantial similarity” between the two commercials.