So where does ingenuity come from? Why would intel make cpu's if a chinese company could reverse engineer them and sell you the same thing for $10? Whats the incentive to do better? Whats the incentive to be great?
Don't get me wrong, IP law is incredibly important and creators should be paid handsomely for the fantastic inventions, books, songs, and other things they bring to the world. But as with many things, it has been distorted from a way to protect inventors and creators into just another form of corporate welfare.
Going back to the Nike swoosh and trademark. Let's look at the purpose behind trademark. Yes, it's Wikipedia, but for these purposes it will suffice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark
A trademark or trade mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.
When Nike shoes were manfactured in the US, the Nike trademark meant you were purchasing a pair of shoes produced by the Nike company in an American factory. The $50 you paid for those shoes was based on the price it cost to produce them, various costs of doing business, supply chain, etc., and a portion of it was profit. Absolutely nothing wrong there, right? At this point, trademark will protect both Nike and the consumer from somebody passing off a cheaply made shoe as a Nike.
Now Nike realizes that Americans are cocky, and expect things like health care, decent pay, and safe working conditions. They look at China, and none of those things apply. Those shoes which used to cost $20 to make can be made for $1 in China. Seems like a good idea, right? Especially because we don't need to change the price of the shoes. People already expect to pay $50 for Nike shoes. The company just makes $19 more per pair than they used to and the CEO gets a big bonus. Nobody else can make a Nike because of trademark, so there's no competition when it comes to selling $50 Nike shoes. Or is there? That same factory that makes Nike shoes can keep the factory going 24/7, and we know that factories in China do this. It can pump out more $50 Nike shoes than the market can bear. But those shoes are counterfeit. Because of trademark law it doesn't matter that it is the exact same shoe from the exact same place. If those shoes were shipped to the US and somebody attempted to sell them for $31 (because there's no need to pay the added $19 Nike corporate markup) Nike would shut them down. At this point, trademark isn't protecting the consumer from buying a cheaply made knockoff, because the consumer is getting the exact same product. What trademark is actually protecting is that $19 of extra profit per pair of shoes that goes directly to the wealthy owners of Nike.
Obviously it's more complicated than that, but there's no denying that IP laws in this country are a part of the massive transfer of wealth to the top 0.1%.
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