We learned this week that a product I designed is being counterfeited in China. This product is a fairly complex piece of industrial engineering. We estimate nearly 1000 tech-hours would be needed to reverse engineer this device in proper detail – custom plastic injection molds, custom aluminum extrusion molds, NC and hand-machined aluminum parts, multiple PCB designs, custom transformer design, etc..

This reminds me of a bottom-feeder German audio electronics company called Behringer that got their start by simply photo-copying another company’s PCB design and putting it in their own chassis. They were successfully sued by the company from which they stole intellectual property. Yet, today, Behringer has grown to be one of the industry leaders in throw-away (short-life-cycle) audio products, while the company whose property they copied has remained small, choosing to make products of far higher quality.

Perhaps this is an example, a metaphor, of today’s social condition – propping up greed and consumption at the expense of long-term sustainability. And as hard as the Chinese tried to make an accurate copy of our product, it remains an obvious fake in virtually all respects. Economics, like any complex design, cannot be forced or faked without consequences. Any imbalance in an organic system will seek to re-balance itself. It’s how the universe was designed. And the universe will find balance, at any cost. 

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