Most would agree that some Chinese firm manufacturing a cheap and faulty TV set and branding it as a “Samsung” would qualify as fraud, and hence be punishable.
But what if some Chinese manufacturer of cars made an exact copy of, say, a Ferrari Enzo, design, materials and all, and branded it a Ferrari, actually making it indistinguishable form a “made in Italy”, would you as an Arbiter or the firm’s Liability Insurer, qualify this fraud? Would the firm (or its insurer)be liable to paying damages to the customers?
I would not, after all this is the same product, and naming it a Ferrari is not misleading a bit.
The contract is where the fraud happens, most expensive items have contracts. If the company is not claiming to be his competitor or offering a service that they do not actually possess than I see no reason to complain.
Well it’s standard fraud if a product isn’t what it says on the tin – if you are promising a ferrari and not delivering a ferrari then you are quite clearly defrauding your customer. We need no “intellectual property” laws to justify that.
I think you could probably use the same name, but you couldn’t claim to be the same producer. For example, you could use the word Ferrari as your brand name, and even perhaps a logo involving similar images. However, it would seem to be fraudulent if you were to sell your products as genuine Ferrari products. For example products that are sold as fakes are legitimate, even if they involve the same branding etc.
Depends on the customers. Most would in fact feel themselves defrauded. People don`t buy a Ferrari for the car. They buy it for the brand. If the car was not actually made in the Ferrari plant then it is not a Ferrari in this sense.
If a customer was made to feel he was buying the Ferrari mystique along with a car, but then he only got the car, then there was fraud.
I am not sure if fraud is much of an issue, but I know that the Shelby Cobra is a pretty popular kit car, and buyers, if they have the preference (and the money) would certainly want to make sure that they were buying a “real” AC Shelby Cobra and not a replica.
Exactly. And in such a society, all it would take is for the consumer to ask a few simple questions… “are you a representative of the company that races in the formula 1? Is your CEO…?” or whatever.
“Under our proposed theory would fraud be actionable at law? Yes, because fraud is failure to fulfill a voluntarily agreed upon transfer of property, and is therefore implicit theft. If, for example, A sells to B a package which A says contains a radio, and it contains only a pile of scrap metal, then A has taken B’s money and not fulfilled the agreed upon conditions for such a transfer-the delivery of a radio. A has therefore stolen B’s property. The same applies to a failure to fulfill any product warranty. If, for example, the seller asserts that the contents of a certain package include 5 ounces of product X, and they do not do so, then the seller has taken money without fulfilling the terms of the contract; he has in effect stolen the buyer’s money. Once again, warranties of products would be legally enforceable, not because they are “promises,” but because they describe one of the entities of the agreed-upon contract. If the entity is not as the seller describes, then fraud and hence implicit theft have taken place.13”