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| Honest Pinnocchio by Mike He, a Chinese designer “It is your pencil that makes him lie” Source: Yatzer |
One night, the wood carver Geppetto general manager DaVinci furniture Panzhuang Xiahua had a dream. He She dreamed that the marionette would come to life company would import high quality furniture from Italy.
Well it seems now exactly that, just a dream. It turned out that the products where made in China and after an export-and-import scheme sold in China as Italian furniture. Stan ‘China Hearsay’ Abrams asserted that the item was covered in the media erroneously as an IP in China subject because there was no IP infringement, see here. If you interpret the term strictly he is right. However, one can interpret IP in China a little bit broader (if only to cover this over-the-top dramatic press conference, see videos via Kenneth Tan’s Shanghaiist post here). This news does put the origin function of the trademarks, coupled to the quality function in the spot light. Instead of blaming the allegedly greedy purchasers of extremely expensive furniture I propose that even the very well to do should be protected from confusion about the source of the products. And the course of events might have damaged the reputation of the Made in Italy label, see The Made In Italy Portal here.
More about Pinocchio’s allegory (on those darned 1880s) see here.
