Political & Elections

I wasn't aware of the reorganization. I guess I'll need to find a chart of who does what one of these days.

> If the government provides trademark protection should the government be
> allowed to dictate price? Is there a special tax paid by these companies or is
> trademark protection paid for from general funds? In tough budget times
> what is the value of trademark protection to the general public?

Those fake tennis racquets for sale are real racquets and they probably play as
well as your typical $200 frame. They just have different specifications. Tennis
racquets cost from $5 to $10 to manufacture and they get sold from $150 to $250
(I'm not talking about the discount frames at WalMart which cost much less). The
harm is in a player looking for a specific model getting something else. The average
player really wouldn't know the difference.

I don't believe that the government should be allowed to dictate price. The market
already does a good job of that. If you can get fakes for a fraction of branded
goods, then those fakes could just come up with their own brand and sell them at discounted prices. WalMart sells a brand called Faded Glory or something similar and their prices for that brand are low compared to similar products at stores that provide more service. They just can't call them Levis or whatever else is popular these days.

Let's take a look at tech products. Are there counterfeit Dell, Apple, HP products? I don't believe that there are in the United States - at least I haven't read about any and I follow tech news pretty closely.

In tech, your best protection on brand is to innovate relentlessly. Someone can make a knockoff of your product but you release a new product with new features and benefits before they can get copies rolling off the production line. Apple has done a masterful job at relentless innovation.

Look at the Android-based smartphones. I think that the product development cycle is down to months now. Hard to copy products when they continuously come out with new stuff.

This kind of competition strongly benefits the consumer and government intervention isn't really needed.

Things like watches, handbags, clothes, etc. where the benefits are clearly obvious or perhaps they are subjective probably do require more enforcement. I would guess that the companies themselves pay for enforcement in addition to contacting legal authorities when arrests and prosecutions are required.

There is a tech company that has a product that is widely counterfeited and that spends a lot of money fighting counterfeiting and that's Microsoft. They have a product that many teenagers and people in other countries feel is free because it is so easy to get. Microsoft has tried all kinds of different methods to fight this including selling their products in other countries for far lower prices than they sell them in developed countries. This seems to be a reasonable solution.

They have tried all kinds of software security approaches with many of these coming back to bite them as legitimate customers complain about the hassle. I do prefer to see market-based solutions where possible and especially where it is easy.