Danish manufacturer of LEGO construction sets won a lawsuit against Odessa entrepreneurs who sold Chinese counterfeit sets. The company obtained a ban on trade in counterfeit goods, their seizure, and recovery of UAH 7,225 of the proceeds from the sellers.
Danish manufacturer of LEGO construction sets won a lawsuit against Odessa entrepreneurs who sold Chinese counterfeit sets. The company obtained a ban on trade in counterfeit goods, their seizure, and recovery of UAH 7,225 of the proceeds from the sellers.
But the legal story did not end there. LEGO Holding initially tried to recover from the defendants about €110,000 in attorneys' fees. The Supreme Court ultimately decided that this amount was somewhat excessive for this case and reduced the compensation to UAH 42,000.
The story is described by «Dumskaya».
In February and May 2024, LEGO representatives conducted test purchases in Ukrainian online stores. There, they discovered Chinese-made sets that copied the company’s original construction sets.
LEGO filed a lawsuit with the Commercial Court of Odessa Region. The defendants were Olga Frosina, Olga and Petro Reznichenko, as well as Union Group Trading Company LLC from Ovidiopol.
The court of first instance sided with LEGO: it banned the sale of counterfeit goods, ordered the seizure and destruction of counterfeit sets, and also ordered the entrepreneurs to collect UAH 7,225 in income from illegal trade.
It would seem that the story could have ended there. But then another bill appeared in the case — this time for millions of hryvnias.
In the summer of 2024, LEGO Holding entered into an agreement on legal support of the case with the Sayenko Kharenko Law Firm.
From August 2024 to January 2026, lawyers issued the corporation 16 invoices for a total of €110,057.50 — according to the court, the payment was confirmed by FUIB certificates.
LEGO decided to compensate for these expenses at the defendants' expense. Representatives of the bar association explained that the case required a significant amount of work: it was necessary to prepare objections, procedural documents, attorney requests, and respond to numerous motions from the other side.
The lawyers also emphasized the international significance of the case for LEGO’s reputation.
Entrepreneurs did not agree with this approach. In their opinion, €110,000 for the lawsuit surrounding counterfeiting, from which the company received UAH 7,225, clearly did not seem like a proportional amount.
The court acknowledged that LEGO’s lawyers had indeed worked on the case, but disagreed with the claimed value.
In particular, the court did not assess the lawyer’s requests to Nova Poshta, PrivatBank and Pivdennyi banks, customs and counterparties, as well as applications for video conferences and submission of evidence as separate expensive legal services. They were classified as routine work on the claim and procedural documents.
As a result, the court assessed the work as follows:
As a result, instead of the declared €110,057.50, or approximately UAH 5.5 million, the compensation for legal expenses was reduced to UAH 42,000.
Separately, entrepreneurs have to pay about UAH 52,000 for the examination of counterfeit designers.
That is, LEGO did win the counterfeiting case and obtained compensation, but the difference between how much the corporation wanted to receive for legal fees and how much it was ultimately awarded was almost 130 times.
The decision of the Supreme Court is final and cannot be appealed.
