Are Custom Minifigures Legal?

The question comes up before almost every first custom purchase, and it is usually asked wrong. "Are customs legal" is not one question but three, and they have three different answers.

This is not legal advice, and it describes the situation in the EU; other jurisdictions differ.

Question 1: May somebody print on LEGO parts and sell them?

Reselling, yes — printing is the harder half of the question, and the half-knowledge circulating in the scene reassures people in the wrong direction.

The principle of exhaustion (Art. 15(1) EUTMR, and first sale in the US) says that someone who lawfully acquired goods may resell them and the proprietor cannot prevent it. That is the version everybody quotes.

The second paragraph of the same provision almost always goes missing. Exhaustion does not apply where the proprietor has legitimate reasons to oppose further commercialisation — and the law names one example explicitly: where the condition of the goods has been changed after they were put on the market. Taking a figure apart and reprinting it is precisely that.

So the custom market does not rest on the safe ground exhaustion is usually invoked as. It rests on the fact that the proprietor has largely not acted. It gets risky where the reputation of the mark is touched — real military insignia, weapons, drastic motifs — or where the presentation suggests a connection to the manufacturer that does not exist.

The second limit is in the presentation. What is not allowed is creating the impression that this is a LEGO product: no LEGO logo on the packaging, no trade dress that looks official, no description as a "LEGO figure". Serious makers observe this and usually state outright that they are not affiliated with the LEGO Group.

The brick is free, the minifigure is not

This is where people generalise too fast. For the brick the phrase "long free" holds: the original patents expired decades ago, and in 2010 the Court of Justice cancelled the shape mark on the eight-stud brick because it is exclusively technical (C-48/09). That is why compatible systems exist at all.

For the minifigure it does not hold. Its shape is registered as a three-dimensional EU trade mark, and the General Court has upheld it twice: in 2015 against Best-Lock (T-395/14) and most recently on 8 December 2023 (T-297/22 and T-298/22). The reasoning was the same both times: the head, arms and legs are not exclusively dictated by technical function but also by design — and are therefore registrable. On top of that come registered designs on individual components, confirmed by the court against Delta Sport in 2021 (T-515/19).

The distinction matters more than it sounds: a patent expires, a trade mark does not. It can be renewed indefinitely. So the figure shape did not eventually fall free the way the brick did — it stays protected for as long as LEGO maintains the mark.

For a custom on genuine parts this means the shape mark is not the problem: taking an original minifigure apart and printing on it does not reproduce the protected shape, it resells a piece the rights holder put on the market himself. It does not follow that the sale is therefore unproblematic — the altered-goods point from the previous section sees to that.

Question 2: What about recast parts?

That is the other matter. Moulding parts yourself and passing them off as LEGO infringes trade mark law — the brand name on every stud is a registered mark, and a copy of it is counterfeit in the narrow sense. Goods like that can be seized at import.

With a figure, the shape mark from the previous section applies on top. A self-moulded body in minifigure shape hits not just the lettering but the protected shape itself — even where the word LEGO appears nowhere. That is why compatible manufacturers give their figures visibly different proportions.

This is the practical reason part sourcing is the first question to ask any maker: it decides not only the quality but the legal category of the product.

Special case: figures on third-party moulded parts

Part of the market does not work on LEGO parts but on bodies moulded in-house or bought in — often shipped as a bag of components the buyer assembles. This is the riskiest variant, and the reason has nothing to do with the printing.

The shape mark protects the form, not the material. On 12 August 2022 the Düsseldorf Regional Court barred a retailer from distributing minifigures made by competing brick manufacturers: to an average buyer the figures were highly similar, creating a direct likelihood of confusion. The judgment covered an injunction, destruction of stock, disclosure of suppliers and damages. LEGO had based the claim not only on the trade mark but also on copyright and registered designs.

Shipping it as a kit probably does not help. Whether arms and legs are attached at the factory or at a kitchen table does not change the shape of the goods being offered. No decision specifically on this constellation is known — so the question is not settled, but betting on the packaging would be a bold wager.

For you as a buyer the split from above still holds: the risk sits with the seller. It does have two practical consequences. A shipment from outside the EU can be held at customs if it is classified as infringing — in which case you lose the money along with the figure. And a shop working on third-party moulded bodies is the shop that gets a cease-and-desist tomorrow and goes offline.

So the question of part sourcing is more than a question of quality. It also tells you how stable the seller you are about to order from actually is.

Question 3: What about the character depicted?

The scene likes to call this a grey area. It is not one.

The appearance of a well-known character — armour, mask, colourway, silhouette — is protected by copyright, regardless of which parts it is printed on and what the product is called. Reprinting a character design without a licence infringes that right. Disney, Nintendo and comparable rights holders enforce it regularly and hard.

The common practice of paraphrasing changes little. A name that lets you recognise the source without naming it additionally avoids a word mark infringement — it does not make the design any freer. A shop renaming its figures is therefore not evidence that it has solved the legal question, only that it knows about it.

What this means for you as a buyer

In civil terms the private collector is not the target: cease-and-desist letters and damages require acting in the course of trade, and that is the seller. But that is not the whole picture.

The customs risk hits you directly. Under the EU anti-counterfeiting regulation (Reg. (EU) No 608/2013) customs may stop postal consignments to private individuals too and have the goods destroyed where trade mark or copyright is infringed. You get no legal letter, but you get neither the figure nor your money. For orders from outside the EU — and a substantial part of this market sits there — that, rather than liability, is the real risk.

On top of it comes the everyday case: a shop pulls a series, which is exactly why runs disappear so quickly here.

What this means for buying

• Buy from makers who state their part sourcing. That settles questions 1 and 2 at once.
• Distrust listings that advertise with the word LEGO. Anyone who needs that is either selling a fake or does not understand their own product.
• Do not expect a figure to still be available in two years. In the custom market that is the rule, not the exception.

And if you want to sell yourself?

Then nothing above reads as an all-clear. This piece is written for buyers. Anyone offering customs commercially is operating in trade mark, copyright and unfair competition law at once, and none of the three can be settled by a guide article. That is the point where legal advice stops being a formality.

The last point is where most collectors eventually get stuck: what you did not document, you will not find again. Plasticfolk keeps custom figures with stable IDs in the same catalogue as the official ones — long after the shop has taken the page down.

Next: What are custom minifigures?