IP theft: Wow, that steel wire basket looks like ours? It IS ours

From Drew Greenblatt’s latest column in Inc. magazine on how intellectual property theft is undermining U.S. manufacturing -- and Marlin Steel:

On multiple occasions, I’ve come across images of wire and sheet metal baskets on Chinese and Indian competitors’ websites. They don't just look like our baskets. They are our baskets, being portrayed as the fruit of someone else’s engineering.

Marlin Steel wire form web image

Chinese competitor wire form web image

My IT consultant has come across pilfered images of our baskets on Google searches so often she says it’s like "fishing in a coffee cup." The thieves typically smudge off our watermark with photo software. One telltale sign: The basket is skewed to the bottom of the image so their watermark surgery isn’t so obvious. Other times, they’re so brazen they simply leave the Marlin logo on the photo. Intellectual property theft is an enormous and growing burden for American business. Count us as one of the many victims. Imitation may be flattery, but in this case it has the potential to flatten businesses. Read more ...