The Rubik's Cube

In 1974, a Hungarian architect and design lecturer named Ernö Rubik created a device to explore his fascination with space. It consisted of a cube with each face made up of nine smaller cubes. An intricate internal mechanism allowed each external layer of the larger cube to be twisted to alter the positions of the smaller, individual ones. Rubik painted each face a different colour and started to twist. It took him a month to restore the cube to its original pattern.

Realising that he had stumbled upon a singularly engrossing puzzle, Rubik applied for a Hungarian patent, which was granted in 1977 (HU170062). He then teamed up with a Budapest entrepreneur called Tibor Laczi, who obtained permission from the state trading company Konsumex to market the toy beyond the Iron Curtain. They took the Cube to the Nuremberg Toy Fair, where it caught the attention of Tom Kramer of Seven Towns Limited in London, who promptly licensed the worldwide distribution rights. In September 1979, the American firm Ideal Toys signed a deal with Seven Towns to market the Cube in the West.

‘REGISTERING AN INTERNATIONAL PATENT WAS NOT AN OPTION AS RUBIK HAD FAILED TO APPLY WITHIN A YEAR OF RECEIVING THE HUNGARIAN VERSION’

Within months the world was gripped by Cube mania. Ideal Toys was flooded with orders and Rubik became the Eastern Bloc’s first self-made millionaire. But the IP situation was precarious. Patents existed for several similar toys and registering an international patent right was not an option as Rubik had failed to apply within a year of receiving the Hungarian version. Ideal Toys was therefore forced to concentrate its protection efforts on the registered trademarks ‘Rubik’ and ‘Rubik’s Cube’.

Although Rubik received a US patent for the Cube in 1983 (US4,378,116), it expired several years ago. Seven Towns has subsequently attempted to fight off competitors by invoking rights relating to the trade dress of the toy and associated products. It has since filed trademarks for ‘Rubik’s Magic’ and ‘Rubik’s Mini Cube’ among others. And it protects them fiercely. In summer 2004, Stephanie Cox, the owner of Pufferbelly Toys, St Helens, Oregon, was surprised, not to say alarmed, to be visited by a pair of agents from the US Department of Homeland Security. They ordered her to remove a Rubik’s Cube-like toy, called the Magic Cube, from her shop shelves, explaining that a trademark infringement complaint had been lodged at the agency’s Washington DC headquarters.


This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 24