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Zonie63 -> RE: Proposed NYC Law Could Send Buyers Of Knockoff Handbags To Ja1 (4/28/2011 12:35:07 PM)
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ORIGINAL: LadyConstanze
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
I'm not sure how they can make a law like this stick. How is this any different from when I go to the grocery store looking for my box of Honey-Nut Cheerios and finding a store brand called "Honey Nut Toasted Oats" right next to the Honey-Nut Cheerios? You can read the box and see that they're different, even if they may look vaguely similar to each other. But one is quite a bit cheaper than the other. Nearly every product out there has a generic or store brand, and as long as nobody is blatantly passing off the generic brand as the name brand, then it seems like it should be okay.
The sweatshop argument is compelling, but in that case, I believe that all items manufactured in sweatshops should be banned for sale. Of course, I would define sweatshop as any place where the workers earn less than the U.S. minimum wage.
For some countries less than the minimum wage in the US or a European country is still a lot more buying power, so that doesn't work. Thank heavens not the whole world is like the US!
Maybe so, but I was addressing the argument that they should be banned because they're made in sweatshops. What defines a "sweatshop"? Do we define it by US/European standards or by some other standard? How do we know that the more expensive top-name brands aren't also made in sweatshops?
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As for not being able to make a law like this stick, oddly enough we clueless Europeans seem to have managed to do that, you might have heard of trademarks and copyright? So if a bag claims to be Gucci or Prada and it isn't, duh, it's sorted.
We have trademark and copyright laws in the United States, too, and they most definitely have teeth in them. But in this case, they seem to find it necessary to pass a local law. Why wouldn't it already be covered under the existing law?
Also, according to the article posted by the OP, it doesn't seem to be the same thing as fraudulently labeling something as Gucci when it wasn't in fact, Gucci. They also mentioned "Ronex watches," but obviously "Ronex" is not the same as "Rolex." All anyone has to do is just look at the label or brand name, and they could see the difference.
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And it's not a bit cheaper, we're talking about high quality items, can you imagine buying a Porsche for a lot of money and then somebody has a car who looks the same, has the same label but is a cheap copy?
If someone was calling it and labeling it a "Porsche" when it really wasn't, then I would agree. If someone was selling a "Borsche" and labeling it as such, then I would see the difference. My main concern would not be whether it looked the same as a Porsche, but the quality of the engineering and reliability.
Besides, a lot of car makes/models look remarkably similar to each other, even if they're made by different companies. However, they're not exactly the same, and somehow it must be just enough to avoid any liability for trademark or copyright infringement.
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Designers don't mind if high streets copy the rough style of an item, but once they copy the whole design and would even use the label on it, you usually have a copyright infringement law suit worth several million... You might remember how eBay cracked down on fakes. Personally I think you can spot fakes usually from a mile away and it makes the person wearing the fake look cheap and tacky.
Well, again, if something is blatantly falsely labeled and being sold as something that it's not, then I agree. It would seem that that's not only copyright infringement, but also consumer fraud.
I would also wonder if these cheap copies have any quality to them at all. As you mentioned above, the bags you've had were made to last for years and years, but what if these bags fall apart after a couple of months? Then it's still a matter of getting what you pay for.
On the other hand, if these street copies are of comparable quality as the high-end expensive brands, then I would wonder about that, too. If other companies can acquire the same materials, build the equipment, and hire the labor to make nearly the same bags as the high-end manufacturers, while the top brands charge top dollar just because they can, then that would make me wonder, too. It sounds like some of these companies can't play fair under free market rules, and are trying to invoke the power of the state to eliminate their competition for them.
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