Tom Dixon: Legal advice for designers

In his presentation at the London Design Festival, Dixon commented on the threat foreign manufacturers pose to his design business. Searching for his work on eBay produces seven pages and only two genuine items, he said: “All the others are copies at a third of the price from Hong Kong.

” Copiers use drawings from designers’ websites to produce accurate replicas and even steal marketing images to paste into their own online catalogues, he explained. “It’s very quick and pernicious. I used to laugh it off and be flattered that people bothered to copy, but now I’m more nervous.”

Speaking to Dezeen after his talk, Dixon explained that “in Australia for instance, if you call something a Tom Dixon replica you can bypass the law: you’re stating what the thing is, it’s a replica, so therefore it’s legitimate even though it’s a copy.” He says that designers “just have to be smarter, faster and quicker to market.”
Read full article and hear him talk here