Ugh. You seem to have read a million thoughts onto my statement that weren't there.
Trademark law is the most consumer-centric of IP laws -- it is there specifically to protect consumers. Indeed, the problem with Behringturd using the name and trade-dress of its competitors has nothing to do with fairness to the competitors. The problem is that it implies to consumers that the Behringturd product is licensed or otherwise authorized by the competitor when it's not. And yes, I think it is a problem
But Frodebro's concern that people aren't going to innovate if we don't protect them from competition from generics is super skewed and not supported by the evidence. As is the notion that anyone has an ownership interest in an "idea" of any kind.
Tech 21 is still doing just fine and they keep innovating in part because they have to. They can't exist as a company that just cranks out Charcater pedals because -- they are simple to make cheaply and don't have anything terribly novel inside. Yes, it was a cool idea, and Tech 21 profited off of that cool idea for a reasonable time before having to compete with Joyo. Now Tech 21 seems to no longer make a basic Character pedal, which is fine. Get that from Joyo. Now you can get a Character Plus pedal from Tech 21 because they decided to innovate and give the consumer something that Joyo isn't offering at a cheaper price. Consumer wins. At some point maybe Tech 21 can't compete anymore -- not all businesses are meant to last a generation. But the pedal market is example #1 that people are perfectly happy to "innovate" and "create new products" regardless of whether they have a protected market for the "innovation" or not. So if Tech 21 eventually stops being able to come up with new ideas, and is beat out by folks that are able to make a similar thing for cheaper...the consumer isn't losing out on anything. Tech 21 will have ended because it ran out of ideas, not because it wasn't sufficiently motivated to innovate.
