This is most certainly not legal advice. But...
I don't think they've ever made that explicitly clear and I don't think they ever will for commercial reasons. But there's good reasons to think they don't have any power in that regard. Most notably the bricks are, for the most part, covered by patents and not copyright which means a representation of them is highly unlikely to have any copyright at all. In fact, in the cases I'm aware of where TLG tried to sue competing companies for copyright infringement over bricks they have failed.
Selling instructions of an official model is a different matter. Those would definitely be covered under copyright to some extent and you might find yourself on the wrong side of the law. The sites that have old instructions have been granted licenses by TLG for that purpose.
Which isn't to say that they couldn't drag you to court anyway if they pleased. It's just unlikely to happen given it has never happened before. And these days communication between their community representatives and legal team is pretty good so you'd be more likely to be asked to stop than sued.
Tim
I don't think they've ever made that explicitly clear and I don't think they ever will for commercial reasons. But there's good reasons to think they don't have any power in that regard. Most notably the bricks are, for the most part, covered by patents and not copyright which means a representation of them is highly unlikely to have any copyright at all. In fact, in the cases I'm aware of where TLG tried to sue competing companies for copyright infringement over bricks they have failed.
Selling instructions of an official model is a different matter. Those would definitely be covered under copyright to some extent and you might find yourself on the wrong side of the law. The sites that have old instructions have been granted licenses by TLG for that purpose.
Which isn't to say that they couldn't drag you to court anyway if they pleased. It's just unlikely to happen given it has never happened before. And these days communication between their community representatives and legal team is pretty good so you'd be more likely to be asked to stop than sued.
Tim