Is China’s Copycatting unethical
According to a public annual ranking of China’s top ten hot words on internet, “Copycatting” is the very first one word from the list of 2008. This word in Chinese literally refers to “small mountain village”, but it has evolved to describe local manufactured products or goods that have similar features, outlooks or names to world-famous brands and products. The first genre of products being called copycat was electronics, back to year 2006. The copycatting iPhones were produced by some local workshops in southern China, with almost same functions and specifications, but ridiculously low price and a different while similar brand name, such as aPhone, lPhone. It then speedily became popular throughout the whole mainland China. Later the phenomenon stretched out to more industries and fields, such as shoes, cloths, backpacks, autos etc. Even faster, copycatting has shaped a new innovation culture and starts to have a commercial impact on the market. At the same time, it has become a controversial topic throughout the whole world.
Critics and arguments spring up from people in developed countries like America and Europe. They keep complaining and criticizing that existence of copycats dramatically damages their protection of intellectual property rights. They claim that it is an unethical effrontery. It is true that some copycatting products may have some issues on intellectual property, but this is mainly because the legal system and environment of China is still very weak while compared to developed countries. Since different countries have different rules in intellectual property protection area, it’s hard to come up a fair legal discussion. However, in the view of morality, I wouldn’t agree at all that copycats are not ethical. Although these copycatting products have similar appearances with those genuine ones, they