LEGO

One of the commenters on Rebrickable said they had seen these MOCs before removal and then alluded to “whales” in reference to the copyright holder. I asked elsewhere what company people think this could be in reference to and the only answer I heard was the rightsholders for Star Trek, not Disney; the allusion is supposedly to the whales that were prominent in the fourth Star Trek movie. Apparently Paramount is litigious in regards to Star Trek, and with the first Lego set of that franchise coming out soon it may be that the rightsholders have had their attention newly drawn toward the Lego medium. I’ve also not had any of my Star Wars MOCs get taken off of Rebrickable yet and there would be much more outcry if users started seeing their Star Wars MOCs get removed (simply due to the number of users and bigger names who post those) so I don’t think it is Disney.

It seems as though both copyright and trademark are at play but I am not a lawyer so I don’t know the full scope of what those cover but the law also means nothing when you can buy and bully your way past it.

I’d assume the rightsholder’s intent is simply to limit who uses their IP’s semblance and how it is used. Based on how impactful the Lego community has been on growing the Star Wars fandom and ultimately leading to more fans buying more official merch, it would be asinine for a company to overlook how much Lego fans’ contributions can ultimately grow and profit their franchise. Nevertheless, if it is the rightsholders for Star Trek or some other IP without a history in Lego, they may not yet see this.

I think simply communicating how to assemble components into a semblance of an IP is entirely different from selling the semblance of the IP in the form of pre-fab bodies or in the form of packages containing components and assembly instructions. Would Nintendo’s lawyers get on my case if I said to make a mosaic of Mario you need to put a black pixel there and a red pixel here and so on? I think it would be best if the law (and those whom it should apply to) would say that a person saying “hey you can make a semblance of this IP at home by doing this” and that person making some or no profit off of it would be fine. However, using trademarked and copyrighted names in a product, even if that product is just instructions, may mislead some customers into thinking the product is officially sanctioned by the rightsholders, so I would advocate against using it for instructions that are not free.

My Own Creation - a build that was designed by somebody other than The Lego Company.

If you refer to a build that was designed by another person, it can be called a SEC (Somebody Else’s Creation), but it is common to use MOC to refer to either your own or somebody else’s designs depending on the context. Indicating a build is a SEC rather than your MOC helps to make it clear who gets credit for the design.

What's the backstory there?

Space Fight Authoritarian Government Convoy