The legendary maker of little bricks used to construct toys, monsters, and robots requests you refer to their brand name without the damned S’ please.

Businesses must protect their trademarks, and spend a lot of money to build brand awareness. Part of that strategy leads businesses with an online presence to purchase URLs containing different spellings. The Lego toy company has done so by purchasing legos.com.

Many people tend to call Lego toys Legos’. Evidently, someone in the corporate offices at Lego has taken the term Legos’ as a deeply personal, slandering insult. Visiting Legos.com brings up a redirect page along with an admonishment to the visitor:

The word LEGO is a brand name, and is very special to all of us in the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely like your help in keeping it special. Please always refer to our products as “LEGO bricks or toys” and not “LEGOS.” By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we are very proud, and that stands for quality the world over. Thank you!
Wow. Making the argument that calling the bricks Legos instead of Lego bricks’ violates the brand comes across as unusually pedantic. Probably a legal necessity, but still not a very consumer-friendly approach.

Lego isn’t exactly innocent when it comes to using terms without permission. The company’s Bionicle line of toys featured names derived from Maori tribes, a practice that earned the company a rebuke over its unauthorized and inappropriate use of “traditional names and language” from a New Zealand Maori lawyer. Lego generously met with Maori representatives and agreed to stop the usage of those terms.

David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.