CONFIRMED
This is the plain-language edition of the trademark that came back generic. Same facts, same grade, none of the serial numbers, nothing collapsed into boxes. Every claim below is stated again on the cited edition with the documents attached.
On February 25, 2025, a trademark examiner at the United States Patent and Trademark Office refused to register the name BRICKS & MINIFIGS. His reason was one word: generic. A trademark is supposed to be a brand, a name that points at one seller. The examiner ruled these words are not that. They are the plain name of the things on the shelf. And here is the part that matters most. To prove it, he did not need outside witnesses. His strongest evidence was the company’s own pages: its homepage, its Instagram, and two of its franchisees’ storefronts, all using the word “minifig” as the ordinary name of the merchandise. Then look back across fifteen years, and the company has already given up every single word in its own name, one word at a time, on the public record.
Some words start as brands and slowly turn into plain nouns. Aspirin was a brand. So were escalator, cellophane, thermos, and the murphy bed. People used them so often for the thing itself that the words stopped belonging to anyone. That is one way a name goes generic: it dies of its own success. But a name can also be born that way, built out of words the public already uses for the product, so it never really works as a brand at all. The examiner put BRICKS & MINIFIGS in that second bucket. Not a brand that faded, in his reading, but a description that was never a brand. A minifig is the little figure. Bricks are the bricks. Put them together and you have described the store, not named a company.
When you file for a trademark, you can tell the government, in writing: I am not claiming to own this particular word by itself. That is a disclaimer. It is a surrender, on the record, of one word. Watch the company do it three times over fifteen years. In 2012 it could not get the words BRICKS & MINIFIGS onto the government’s main list of real brands, so they were parked on a second, lesser list, and the company disclaimed the word MINIFIGS. In 2013 it registered its round logo as a picture, and to do that it disclaimed the whole phrase, BRICKS AND MINIFIGS; what it owned was the drawing, not the words. In 2024, defending the new application, it disclaimed the last word it had never given up, BRICKS. Minifigs, then the phrase, then bricks. Add them up, and the company has told the government, in its own filings, that it holds no exclusive right to any word in its own name.
To decide whether a word is a brand or just the name of the goods, you ask one simple question: what do shoppers understand the word to mean? So you look at how the word actually gets used. The examiner did exactly that, and he barely had to leave the company’s own websites. The rule he leaned on is old and blunt: a company’s own use of a word can be the most damaging evidence that the word is generic. The company’s homepage calls the toys minifigs. Its Instagram calls them minifigs. Its franchise stores label the bins minifigs. That is the whole case, made by the company’s own marketing. When the company argued that it at least owned the short version, minifig instead of minifigure, the examiner answered that shortening figure to fig changes nothing about what the word means. The sign over the door became the witness against the name on the door.
The company once held stronger registrations on the government’s main list. They lapsed. A trademark stays alive only if you file a short renewal saying you are still using it, and for three of its marks the company let that deadline pass; in 2024 all three were cancelled for unfiled paperwork. The one registration it chose to renew is the weak one, on the second-shelf list, with MINIFIGS disclaimed, the very registration the examiner now cites against it. What the company clearly owns today is its logo, its right not to be impersonated, and, on the main list, three letters: BAM. Here is why that matters. A franchise is, at its core, a paid license to a name, and the name over the door is the thing a franchisee pays for. An Oregon franchisee’s store was taken over under this very name in November 2024, walked document by document in the Keizer file.
To be fair to the company: a refusal like this is not a final ruling. The company has answered it, the application is still open, and it may yet win before the examiner or on appeal. Its best argument comes from a recent Supreme Court case: a full name can work as a brand even when the pieces are common words. A disclaimer does not surrender whatever rights the whole name still carries, the second-shelf registration is live and confers real rights, and there is nothing improper about filing and arguing trademark applications; that is ordinary lawyering. The missed renewals are missed renewals, not proof of intent, and the company is presumed to have acted lawfully.
The examiner’s file says the word minifig belongs to the language. The company’s own file, read in order, agrees, one word at a time.
Where this comes from. The public trademark file for the name: the government’s status records for nine of the company’s applications and registrations, the examiner’s written refusals, and the company’s own signed responses, all on file with this site. The older genericide cases the examiner relies on, from aspirin to shredded wheat, are named and quoted on the cited edition, where every record number and link lives. The takeover record is in the Keizer file.
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