The Lego Brick Is Patented in Its Modern Form
On this day · 28 January 1958
At 1:58 pm on a January afternoon in 1958, a Danish patent locked in the little plastic brick that still snaps together today.
On 28 January 1958, the Danish company LEGO filed patent DK92683C for a “toy building element” — the interlocking plastic brick still made today. The application was lodged by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, son of the firm’s founder, at the Danish patent directorate in Copenhagen.
The breakthrough was the stud-and-tube system: cylindrical studs on top, hollow tubes underneath. Earlier bricks were hollow and wobbled, but this design gripped firmly while still pulling apart easily. The patent protected not just the studs but the geometry that let bricks join in countless different positions — the engine of open-ended play.
A brick made in 1958 still clutches a brick made today.
That backward compatibility is the design’s quiet marvel and the reason it is studied as one of the most enduring patents in toy history. Within months, LEGO filed parallel applications across Europe, and the humble two-by-four brick went on to become one of the most reproduced objects ever manufactured.
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