Living in Pakistan, one sees the products of plagiarism every day. Be it pirated movies, music, software, or knock-off t-shirts, bags, etc for sale at retail, it’s part of the consumer fabric now.

My wife and I were at Bata a few days ago and she noted that the loafers there were Ferragamo clones, so it’s even the big boys that do it. No qualms, no issues.

Everybody does it, everybody knows it and no one really cares.

While at Prestige Communications, I was shown a TVC by the head copywriter, Safdar Qureshi. It was recorded off Star World (I think it was an Indian ad for Coke). He was singing along his own lyrics to the coke jingle and telling me how we’d slightly ‘adjust’ the shots to make it fit the product we were advertising — Peanut Pik biscuits. I was horrified. I left soon after and, from what I can see, they went ahead with the plagiarised work. Probably got some praise too!

The same copywriter is responsible for the current Sooper biscuits TVC (before my time) where the energetic song is actually, in his words, “inspired by” Javed Akhtar’s Breathless. It’s a little more than inspired!

Anyway, getting on, I came across this funny, yet serious, piece on BusinessWeek.com that writes about a new museum in Germany that solely exhibits counterfeit goods!

The Museum Plagiarius, housed in a converted railway building, will permanently exhibit 300 original products together with seemingly identical rip-offs. These items range from fashion and household products to electrical and medical equipment.

I googled around and found that there’s been an annual awards show that’s been taking place since 1977. Have a look at the Plagiarius website to see all the winners over the years, including this year’s champs. Most of them tend to be Chinese, but there were a few Europeans in there too, so it’s not a third-world bashing or anything.

Another piece I read, went on to say:

The prize is the Plagiarius Award, which aims to bring notoriety to the “most brazen” acts of design plagiarism on the world market. And it is not just a question of fake Rolexes and Polo shirts. Among the 2002 honorees are such disparate creations as a cutlery set, a coat rack, and pneumatic cylinders; one of last year’s prizes went to a new municipal streetcar.

Now in its 26th year, the Plagiarius has become something of an institution in design-obsessed Germany. It has also made its founder and guiding spirit, Rido Busse, a legend in his field–the J. Edgar Hoover of industrial design.

Busse goes on to say:

Anything can be plagiarized,” says Busse, who also runs his own firm, Busse Design, in the southern German city of Ulm. “It’s as simple as knowing the market. If a design sells well, someone is going to rip it off. It’s that easy.” The practice of stealing design concepts is a global industry estimated to be worth about $300 billion a year, according to the German Chamber of Commerce.

I love the “It’s that easy” part at the end of his quote above. It really is that easy, but should we do it because it’s the simplest way to do good work?