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A police department in Southern California has run afoul with Lego and has received a cease and desist warning.
The Murrieta Police Department has been using Lego man faces to cover up the identity of non-violent suspects in publicly-shared photos, but that practice now has to stop after the toy company found out about it. It started in January when the state of California passed a law prohibiting police from sharing photos of non-violent suspects on social media. So, to be in full compliance with the law, the department began covering suspects' faces with Lego man faces. Last week the department received a warning from Lego demanding it stop using the Lego photos as it violates its intellectual property.
The department issued a statement explaining, "The Lego Group reached out to us and respectfully asked us to refrain from using their intellectual property in our social media content, which, of course, we understand and will comply with. We are currently exploring other methods of publishing our content in a way that is engaging and interesting to our followers."