It's almost like what happens to Mercedes Benz. Companies like Mitsubishi shamelessly copy MBZ designs. They've been doing it for years. MBZ's answer is to continuously innovate.
Obsolete you own product.
That's the whole point of patent and copyright law. They're defenses against locusts. The fact that these laws have been abused and need reform should not obscure their underlying value and purpose, which is actually becoming clearer than ever.
"Constantly reinvention" is just total bullshit when you start talking about salt and pepper shakers. And so is the idea of "staying ahead of the curve" when doing so means a non-stop torrent of additions to landfills everywhere. Good designers get this. They're actually very resourceful people who are trying to make the world work better in ways both small and large. Squandering resources with a stream of pointless variations doesn't square with this ethos at all.
The difference between design and trash is that good design is what you hold onto for years, even generations. What the best designers strive for is the elegant solution, a perfect convergence of form and function that resists further change for as long as humanly possible.
Again, the opposite of fashion.
Also, there's a legal concept called trade dress, which protects the signature elements of a product. Mitusibusi copies Mercedes, but only to point. And that point is defined by law. This law explains why the imitations are so pale, and why the markets for Mitsubishis and Mercedes have so little overlap.
That doesn't mean that Mercedes can stagnate. It's a design icon, after all, and has to fit within a larger sphere that is always changing. But protection for its brand does mean can move at a more considered and deliberate pace (good conditions for thoughtful, lasting design), then it could if competitors could make perfect copies with no appreciable latency.
Slow moving design is a feature, not a bug. You'll note that cars that hit on a relatively unchanging design that doesn't date itself quickly have higher resale values than those that don't (like, ahem, Mitsubishi).
Mitsubish are selling product, while this is a portfolio design and thus should require less attention while you work on clients.
The solution is not to blame the victims of the theft. Agreed that shaming isn't always the best idea either though.
