Ifake

So would anyone want an Iphone and only pay half? Oh yeah it also has more features and works with any cell phone service anywhere in the world. Anyone? Ok so what if it isn’t exactly an Iphone but you can’t tell the difference unless you were told? Ok maybe not electronics how about some adidas gear or should I say odidoss. Here’s the scoop, right now in China there are literally thousands of factories and company’s whose sole purpose is to copy as exactly as they can many popular products and then selling them for more than half the price of the original. In the recent issue of one of my favorite mags (Popular Science), where I get up to date on geekdom, there is a great article on this topic. In the past the Chinese were getting their hands on the hottest new products and figured out how to make them the same but way cheaper. The problem with this is that the Chinese knockoffs were far inferior and would either not last or were full of safety issues. You may have heard recently about numerous mass recalls that have happened to many Chinese companies because of problems with their products. It seems that just recently, however, the Chinese have gotten better at their engineering and many of their knockoffs are even better than the original. The Iphone copy, called the minione, is a good example. The fact that the Chinese are making exact copies of these products is not making the original manufacturers very happy. There have been many legal battles to try and stop many of these companies but it seems it is very hard to shut them down completely and there are many legal loopholes they get through. Many times these copy products were so identical the original manufacturers couldn’t even tell the difference and were even servicing the fakes under their warranty. This is good reason to be careful buying products online or from a non-reputable dealer because it may not be what you think it is. I think competition in the marketplace is good and it helps lower prices for us consumers. However, I also think that stealing intellectual property is just as bad as stealing the actual product and reselling it. It wouldn’t be bad if they were making similar products that were a bit different and hopefully better but they are manufacturing the identical product and simply changing the label. The problem is that this won’t stop because people buy the imitations because they are cheaper. I think we have a responsibility as consumers to make ethical purchases to the best of our knowledge. The only way to really stop the problem is to stop the demand. The Chinese government has been trying to stop this problem but it is a bit behind the game. Recently the head of their Food and Drug Administration was sentenced to death and executed. He was taking bribes from Chinese drug companies who were manufacturing imitation drugs, which ended up killing people. That’s how serious the problem has become in the extreme. Most of the cases are not that bad but it is costing companies billions of dollars and it is having a direct impact on the American economy.

I guess the moral of the story is be careful what you buy and cheaper is not always better maybe. I’m a huge fan of great cheap deals but not on cheap products that were made from stolen ideas. Here's the link to the full Popular Science article