For many luxury brands, copycats are the major issue when it comes to protecting their interests, and recent lawsuits suggest that it may not just be the traditional counterfeiting hotspots that they need to worry about, as WIPR finds out.
For luxury goods manufacturers, brand is everything. Luxury products might be defined first as those for which the price paid by the consumer has a weak relationship with the cost (in terms of labour and materials) of the goods, and then as those for which demand is not proportionally related to improving economic wealth.
So a pair of shoes produced by a non-luxury brand might cost $150, while a similar pair (in terms of production costs, though not in terms of ‘quality’) produced by a luxury brand might cost $1,500. The difference in those prices is in part to do with supply, but it is also to do with the brand itself, and everything that goes into it: how and where it is sold, who wears it, the history of the brand, how it is marketed—there are countless influencing factors.
"While luxury goods brands clearly do need to monitor international counterfeiting hotspots closely, they should also keep an eye on developments closer to home."
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IP, counterfeit, Tiffany & Co,
