@brickstudios I am the father from the father/son team that designed the original Ideas submission you are covering here. Were also participating in the BrickLink Designer Program series 4 with our truck design, but unfortunately the crowd support phase ended recently. Thanks so much for making a video on this topic. We believe the bin arm design that we released as a part of our LEGO Ideas submission was innovative and novel. We believe set 42167 would not exist as it does today unless we had released our idea on LEGO Ideas. A few important clarifications from my perspective:

1) We have received no credit or compensation from LEGO (other than the $500 in LEGO sets everyone who reaches 10k votes receives), nor from any of the (at least four that we know of) clone brick companies that copied our bin arm design and are selling sets based on it.

2) LEGO did not steal our idea. The already have full rights to it and would not need to steal it to make use of it however they want. As a part of LEGO Ideas participation you assign LEGO all rights worldwide to your idea for three years.  When you submit an idea, you agree that:

“LEGO and co-marketing partners can use your contributions in any way and for any purpose”...

…“You agree that if the LEGO Group introduces a product similar to your idea or contest entry, whether accepted to or rejected from the site, you understand and acknowledge that any coincidence is unintentional, agree to indemnify and hold LEGO harmless and release LEGO from any and all claims of infringement.”

We participated in the LEGO Ideas program fully knowing this. LEGO is a huge corporation and is going to take actions in their best interest.

3) When we reached out to Hasan at LEGO Ideas about set 42167, a part of his response was “...inspiration for this design is not connected to your design”. To be completely honest we think this is disingenuous. If you look at the designs for LEGO side-loading garbage truck mechanisms before and after we released our design, it is clear that our design was innovative and has been frequently copied. Set 42167 and all of the clone sets sold show that there has been plenty of market demand for a functional LEGO side loading bin arm if one had existed. But one did not exist until we released our design. You've done a nice job of outlining the similarities between our design and set 42167.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Scott

LEGO has mentioned that they will deny projects that they are already planning to produce. That might have been the case.

Interesting that it's called a garbage truck, but everything about it screams recycle truck.

The realism on this design is perfect, it lifts slowly then on occasion launches the bin

bro who in their right mind would throw a blue stud into the thrash can. the stud is worth 1000 currency a piece.
the consumerism is real.........

I have no idea why lego would deny something like that, but basically make a bigger technic version later.

It’s like they only looked at the most simplest aspects of the Ideas design and didn’t account for all the specific issues that the Ideas design addressed

"We were already working on that" ~ Lego after seeing an amazing idea and not already working on that

I was really bummed out that the original ideas set didn't make it. My son would have really loved it.

No, not stolen in this case. This design is nothing close to the actuator assembly for picking up the garbage can submitted by Levi and Scott Hasse to Lego Ideas. I know because I did my best to replicate that design and showed how I did it on my channel two years ago. I got a positive response on my video from one of the original designers himself saying that I was close but not exactly the same and that they had even improved on their original design. This truck is awesome but the garbage can pickup assembly is completely different and even has that unique piece to accomplish the feat which isn't used at all in the Lego Ideas design. They also do not have the compactor.

The thing is, if you upload something to LEGO Ideas and it gets 10,000 supporters, then you've transferred the rights to it to LEGO for a few years, even if LEGO doesn't make the set for the time being. They can do whatever they want during that time.

I can totally see why the original would not make it as an Ideas set. There's no specific size or theme requirement for Ideas, but there is still a general premium vibe, and the garbage truck just screams standard Lego City... but then theres the question of why Lego couldn't have just offered to scale it back into a City set and call it a day because it would be a freaking instant buy for City fans.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they still make smaller Technic (in fact after the proliferation and later abandonment of CCBS and Bionicle I feel like Technic is under utilized as a theme), but a garbage truck at this scale is a no brainer design for Lego City, over you know, the 57th fire truck.

Yes. Next question?
To be completely accurate, it is not legally "stealing" since you wave any right when you apply to the Ideas program, but there are no less than 25 ideas that reached 10'000 supporters, didn't got approved, and somehow become a set less than a three years later...

The blasphemy of you just dumping the smaller pieces on top of the big ones is like unforgivable.

This happens a lot.

I remember the first notable time was with the Ghostbusters Firehouse, Cloud City (although not an ideas design, there was a very similar concept posted online two years before the release of the official one), this garbage truck, and now the Seven Dwarf’s Cottage. Probably missing some.

When Lego has so many concepts to choose from, and so many ways to execute them, but with their almost limitless system somehow ending up with sets looking very similar to popular fan creations, it’s hard to believe these are all just coincidences.

this was the EXACT same thought I had about this set, I REALLY wanted the og garbage truck. I want a set like this but you can be damn sure I will NOT be buying this one

This is just how a garbage truck works, also it’s technic. The people who made the original set wanted it to be made into a set.

they done same on the orrery (42179) but  the first design was in 2013 by maxifigure and in 2016 JKBrickworks upgraded it.
fun fact: all orreries lack elliptical orbit for the seasons.

NGL. I'd be honored.

How companies probably think: if it’s not a patent, it’s not a copy