11 Furniture - Chinese Furniture Company - Copying in China

Copying in China

The article reveals a Chinese furniture company, 11 Furniture, copies IKEA’s blue and yellow color scheme, mock-up rooms, miniature pencils, signage and rocking chair designs and discusses a phenomenon of more and more fakes in China (Lee 2011). The serious problem is that 11 Furniture infringes on the intellectual property rights of IKEA and this is very common in China. China has a large population and is an important market for any industry (Chennai and Hyderabad 2011). Many companies invest in the large market and suffer this problem, so they want to protect their intellectual property rights in China (Lee 2011). However, it is difficult to protect intellectual property rights in the Chinese environment (Lee 2011). This is because China has the problem on the judiciary (Hamilton and Webster 2009).

The article is highly relevant to the topic of the political and legal environment of CISS2001. Copying is the infringement of intellectual property rights (Hamilton and Webster 2009). In this article, 11 Furniture infringes on the intellectual property rights of IKEA and there are an increasing number of counterfeiters in China (Lee 2011). This is because “globalization has put on an onus firms to find ways of protecting intellectual property rights abroad and this has become particularly important in certain sectors such as film, music, and software where the growth of the internet and digitization makes copying much easier” (Hamilton and Webster 2009). In addition, law is important to the firms and the firms should follow the political rule (Hamilton and Webster 2009). Communism in China which is different to most countries and China has a special legal environment (Hamilton and Webster 2009). These cause a Chinese special economic environment and potential rules (Hamilton and Webster 2009). Law also has “a major influence on what firms produce, the production processes used, the prices they