More Lego History

There are lots of competitors with Lego, one that is well known is Mega Bloks. There are others like Tyco and COCO toys.
The Chinese toy company, COCO, was sued for copyright infringement and shut down.The reason they were prosecuted was because of "product confusion." This means that they tried to make their product look just like Legos. The design and packaging were so similar that people thought they were buying Legos when they were really buying COCO toys.
Most competitors create blocks that are compatible with Legos. they fit together so well that it would be hard to tell the two kinds apart. Some of the cheaper and more poorly made either don't go together well or cmpletely incompatible.
I have both Legos and Mega Bloks and I can tell you that they work pretty well together.If I made something from both, the Mega Bloks would be the weak points.

Lego and Mega Bloks have different kinds of sets. For example Mega Bloks make "Halo Wars" building sets, and Lego has a policy of not making war seem like child's play. I really like Halo, but I can only get that kind of blocks by buying the competitor's product. Also, Lego tends to be more expensive.

All Lego pieces have "lego" printed somewhere on them so you can tell they are real.