Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"

"Caesar's," they replied.
Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

Peace

Penguin

In your case of brands breaking down, I think that realistically there would be two cases -

1. The case where someone pretends that they are selling something that was made by someone else, when it was really made by them (X retailer selling a Mad Catz controller and claiming it was first party).

2. The case where X retailer sells identical-looking controllers, and doesn't lie about who made them.

In this situation, the brand name of the retailer means something. Do you trust retailer X to tell you the truth about where their products came from? Can they afford the damage to their brand, if they are not?

But these are just predictions about what might happen if a much less stringent (which I'm proposing could be biblical) legal stance was taken on IP.

I think that accurate predictions of what would happen if a biblical stance on IP was taken would be very positive. However, at the moment, I am concerned first with identifying what the biblical stance would be.

And I will say again, that anything more than the biblical law is just man's idea of fairness.

This statement is based on the assumption that intellectual property is property that somebody owns.

Now, on to my main point that I will bring up today: brand.

In western culture, copyright laws allow us to use brand as a signal to quality. (Making general assumptions here)We buy apple because it is a quality product. We refrain from buying Mad Catz because their crap breaks pretty quickly. Beyond patents, in a world without copyrights and trademarks, brand equity would quickly go down the drain. Apple invests lots of money into a product so that the product attains a high quality. If a company were allowed to legally make and stock counterfeits, I can guarantee that they would do it. When that happens, they would make a killing during the next fleeting six months where brand meant anyone to anything.

http://fightbootleg.blogspot.com/2007/06/spot-counterfeit-gba-game-look-closer.html

The above is a link telling how to spot counterfeit gameboy games. These aren't bootleg, they are professionally manufactured by companies in China. It is a big deal to know how to spot these beyond just paying money to the idea maker. In an attempt to cut costs, these counterfeit games use a watch battery for memory, rather than a flash battery. That means that your save function will quit in about a month, never to start again.

Now there are easy tips to spot counterfeits in this one small industry, but what if this happened to EVERY product we consumed? No human would ever have the time, energy, or ingenuity to test for quality from every single product he or she bought. Sealed foods, since you cannot open them, would no longer be trustworthy (what if this similac formula is actually a counterfeit from China? I don't have a melamine tester – btw, this link shows the fear of people not being able to trust a brand http://www.gmanews.tv/story/121357/Parents-demand-answers-after-China-formula-recalls ) Consumer reports of quality, and even user reviews, would be thrown out the window because there is now guarantee that what they reviewed is what you are buying.

I would say the Biblical basis for brand protection lies closer to bearing false witness. This too is a shaky link, but if I spent more than 5 minutes thinking about Biblical links, I bet I could find something better.

Brand protection is truly just as much about protection of the consumer as it is about protection of the manufacturer. And brands are protected by the government through IP law. So in this case, it isn't nearly as much about fairness as it is about consumer safety.

I have many other arguments as well on the subject, but I will go to them later.