Plagiarism or not?

I've just seen new narwhal of Mojo and noticed that it's almost copy from old narwhal of Schleich.

And after that I started to interesting of other figures of Mojo and found out a lot of "concurrences" between it and Schleich figures from sea life series.







Can it be a kind of plagiarism or Mojo has copyright?

Sorry if there was such topik before - it's rather difficult to me to read all topics and commects in english (I'm from Russia).
But I need to know why there are so much similarities between this two brands.

And sperm whale of Mojo looks like Schleich too!

Hi there, it's definitely not a plagiarism. As far as I know, or remember, the molds are property of Portugese company Maia & Borges who produced them for Schleich. And now they signed contract with Mojo. So basicly Mojo bought the rights for molds. Roger maybe could give you more accurate information ;-)

onatello wrote:

Hi there, it's definitely not a plagiarism. As far as I know, or remember, the molds are property of Portugese company Maia & Borges who produced them for Schleich. And now they signed contract with Mojo. So basicly Mojo bought the rights for molds. Roger maybe could give you more accurate information ;-)

That's absolutely correct! We are lucky that some of these good moulds are back and it is important to insist that there is no plagiarism at all. It happened a lot in the past and Schleich already used moulds that other brands used before, especially with Smurphs.

Big thanks for your answer! Today I learn something new...
I'll try to find more about it and will use this information for my community of figures in Russia.

M & B strikes again

Very interesting, - now they are mad as Schleich, M&B, Papo, Mojo ...more ?


M & B certainly gets a lot out of these moulds

Gosh, - how do we handle this at TAI ?

How many times I have tried to explain this on Instagram, to several people, is driving me nuts XD
But it is good that you opened a topic like this, because now people can read about it :)

M&B are indeed the makers of the sea life molds and companies like Schleich, Papo and Mojo Fun bought the rights to produce these.
Same with the M&B horses, Schleich and Mojo Fun have the rights to sell these under their names.

Now, I want the dolphin and the narwhal XD

SUSANNE wrote:

M & B strikes again

Very interesting, - now they are mad as Schleich, M&B, Papo, Mojo ...more ?


M & B certainly gets a lot out of these moulds

Gosh, - how do we handle this at TAI ?

Note in the original M&B sea life animals, that companies like Schleich, Papo and Mojo Fun have bought the rights to sell the animals under their name.

Jolly Reaper wrote:

Big thanks for your answer! Today I learn something new...
I'll try to find more about it and will use this information for my community of figures in Russia.

There isn't really more to it, than those companies buying the rights of selling those figures
No copyright problems, no plagiarism, nothing wrong :)
Confusing tho, yes XD XD

M&B isn't the only company to sell their moulds rights either, AAA has done this extensively as have others. Makes identifying your models difficult sometimes.

NightLioness wrote:

SUSANNE wrote:

M & B strikes again

Very interesting, - now they are mad as Schleich, M&B, Papo, Mojo ...more ?


M & B certainly gets a lot out of these moulds

Gosh, - how do we handle this at TAI ?

Note in the original M&B sea life animals, that companies like Schleich, Papo and Mojo Fun have bought the rights to sell the animals under their name.

Maybe a link to a section on License agreement explaining what it is?


A License agreement is when one party owns the intellectual rights to something and another party obtains the use of the item in question for a set payment, usually for a specified period of time or number of units.

This is frequently seen in the movie and sports industries.  A clothing company may acquire exclusive rights for producing the sports clothing for a particular year, team, or event.  A TV station may have exclusive rights to broadcast a certain event, film, or tv series.  As soon as the agreement expires, the clothing manufacturer loses their right to produce further items under the license, and the TV station loses the rights to continue to broadcast the event, film/tv series (Unless otherwise stated in the agreement).


Examples in model animal industry:

Maia & Borges (owner) has moulds of sea life.  Schleich had an agreement with Maia & Borges to obtain the right to manufacture / put their name on said models for a certain timeframe (unknown to us).  Once that agreement expired, the production rights were removed from Schleich. This means, as long as they had stock, they could continue to sell said stock, but if they manufactured MORE, the additional could be cause for a lawsuit.  M&B can then make a license agreement with another party, in this case Mojo Fun, to produce stock with Mojo's logos on them.  As long as M&B and Mojo do not use any of Schleich's intellectual property (trademarks) there is no issue.  

AAA has been known to have agreements with other toy manufactures for select moulds.