Am I just a romantic, or does anybody actually have original ideas anymore? If a company produces a product with some ingenuity, creatively approaching the market with something new or innovative, they are only copied by some factory in China. As my generation would say, "Where's the love?" On the other side, there is the expression, "All's fair in love and war"...and international trade.
In many industries, manufacturers are afraid to spend anything substantial on research and development because it will all be for nothing when the product is copied. Or better yet, the innovative company will be labeled as controlling and secretive by the public, when all they want to do is have a fair chance at earning back what they have invested into developing a product.
Drug companies spend millions and billions on developing a new drug which might or might not even do what they hope it does and pass government standards. Then, if they can actually put it on the shelf, they have a very limited number of years to make back their development costs on that drug and all the ones that did not make it. Software developers and movie makers try to protect their information by encoding their games, software, and DVDs, only to have them cracked and distributed for one dollar per disc around the world. And they do not even get to earn that dollar!
And as for physical products like furniture, automobile parts, electronics, and just about everything that fills stores like the ever-growing Wal-Mart, is there any hope of not being undercut by cheap Chinese labor? Maybe not. And the rule of the day seems to be "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Everybody is jumping on this boat. Even the companies that we have come to know and respect have stopped losing their money due to intellectual property right theft, and have started playing by the "international rules" of the game.
That makes me wonder one thing: can you have innovation through continual copying? If I copy you, but change it just a little so I do not exactly copy you, then my neighbor copies me, but changes it just enough to not be an exact copy of my product, things are changing. True?
When dealing with products that are basically the same on the inside but with different flashy exteriors, I wonder if any of this really matters? If someone builds up a reputation for a certain look, maybe it does matter that the look is not copied. But if we are only talking about a slightly different styling that will be pushed on the public in a convincing way, as if to say, "Oh, you have not heard, this is all the fad now," well, maybe the brutal world of copying does not matter all that much. There is not much innovation in making the same old product look better.
Or am I the only one that does not care if my MP3 player does not have the cool new look, but rather just want something that can accomplish the functions for which I bought it? Ok, so I am the only one?
