IP infringement
| This article is about unlicensed toys based on Transformers. For third parties that produce actual Transformers products under license, see Third party. |
The many and varied facets of the Transformers brand are the intellectual property (IP) of Hasbro and TakaraTomy, and their ownership and these ideas and designs is protected by law. Alas, some rascally elements have, over the years, decided they'd like a slice of that pie, and this IP has been subject to theft.
Kinds of IP theft
Technically, any use of Hasbro and Takara's Transformers names, characters and concepts without obtaining a license could be considered IP theft. Things such as fan art and fan fiction, however, are rarely considered problematic, being as they are not intended to generate profit or are otherwise one-off works. When things get dicey is when IP theft occurs on a grander, and more organised scale.
Knockoffs
In the context of Transformers, knockoff is often used to describe both low-budget/quality toys, the kind of thing that one might come across in a 'dollar store', and toys that attempt to replicate genuine Hasbro or Takara products. Knockoffs that are direct replicas of existing Hasbro toys are very obviously the result of theft – in that case, it is the precise design and engineering for the toy that has been stolen. However, it is not unheard of manufacturers to create their own cheap toys in the image of Transformers character, and these still constitute IP theft – here, the theft is of the character's more general appearance.
"Third-party" toys
In the late Noughties, spurred on by the Transformers nostalgia boom invoked by the live-action film series, a new phenomenon arose – unlicensed products based on Transformers aimed at the adult collector market. The earliest examples of this kind of product often acted as 'upgrades' for existing Hasbro toys, such as a trailer/armor set for Classics Ultra Magnus, but the market quickly grew to include standalone action figures based on Transformers characters. The number of groups producing these figures has ballooned rapidly, to the point that two or even three separate companies will be simultaneously releasing toys of the same characters. Popular market trends have included combiners and, more recently, faux-Masterpiece figures.
The fandom's generally recognised name for these kinds of figures is "third-party Transformers", although this is a misnomer for the plain reason that they are not actual Transformers products. Obviously, these should not be confused with the actual third parties who produce Transformers merchandise under license from Hasbro or Takara. In (very half-hearted) attempts to dissuade the notion that they are pinching Transformers characters, "third party" toy manufacturers typically avoid using faction symbols, and give their figures alternative names that attempt to capture the sound and/or spirit of the trademarked originals, with varying degrees of bizarreness. A toy intended to look like Starscream might, for example, wind up named "Stellaryell".
For reasons that are, again, obvious, TFWiki considers "third party" toys unrelated to its goal of documenting the Transformers brand.
Hasbro's stance
Official statements from Hasbro on "third party" toys are few and far between. In one response, provided as part of the company's now-defunct fansite Q&A program, they noted the illegal nature of the figures, and remarked that this kind of IP theft was unfair to legitimate licensees who pay to produce Transformers merchandise.[1]
To date there have been no known instances of Hasbro pursuing actual legal action against the manufacturers of "third party" toys. They did, however, institute a last-minute ban on the sale of such items at BotCon 2012 (this mandate initially encompassed fan art too, but this was quickly relaxed). This policy did not return for the next two BotCons, but was reinstated for BotCon 2015.
