the countries where much of these are made, particulary china, pakitstan, ect do not recognize patent laws, so they could care less. and you know what can be done about it? nothing!!!
Is this a blatent violation of intellectual property rights? Absolutely.
Is it illegal? Absolutely.
What can be done about it? Not much.
China, despite talking nice in order to gain WTO membership, has not done anything about these (and many other) violations. (And by the way, China is a very tightly-controlled country. If the goverment wanted to crack down on these things, these factories would be shut down virtually overnight. Obvisouly, the Chinese government is deliberately and knowingly turning a blind eye to this and also deliberately and knowingly ignoring the legal committments they made to stop this.
Japan and Taiwan have gone a long way to elliminating this sort of thing from their countries. Why? Because they now have intellectual property of their own that they would like the US to recognize and protect. Funny how that works, eh?
But there are many other countries in the world where the governments are either unable or unwilling to enforce internationally recognized intellectual property rights.
What can be done about it? Well, if the owners of violated copyrights, trademarks, or patents see this sort of thing, they should complain to the US Customs Service. Customs can confiscate the violating goods and destroy them. But, truth be known, customs doesn't open every box. And, right now, customs is focusing its efforts on things other than cheap pocket knives.
Never the less, the owners of violated copyrights, trademarks, or patents should still report the violations and ask for enforcement. Why? Because if they don't, they'll loose their rights. If the owner does not at least try to get enforcement of his patent rights, then he may not be able to later enforce that same patent against a domestic compeditor. A court could, and likely would, rule that since he knew of a blatent violation and choose to do nothing, he has abandoned his patent.
Trying to get some enforcement does make life a bit more difficult for the foreign knock-off factories and the Americans who do business with them. It certainly does raise their cost of doing business.
But, the real responsibility rests with consumers. You've got to stop buying this junk... and not just knives, but knock-off goods in general. Insist on buying only goods, all kinds of goods, that are either made in America or are made in countries that respect intellectual property rights.
It goes beyond just intellectual property rights, though. You have to think about where your money ultimately goes when you buy things. For example, shortly after 9/11/01, officials found a factory in South America, I've forgotten exactly where, that was cranking out bootlegged music CDs. The managment had ties to Al Quada
:barf: :barf: :barf:
No problem.