"You don't know what you are talking about. US laws have no bearing on Red China, where they do not honor copyrights. Just because they can get away with something does not make it right."
Wow, what a compelling ad-hominem! But hey, it's Friday, right? Anyway, US laws actually do have bearing on whatever foreign company is selling a US-copyright-infringing product back to the US. That wasn't the point I was making, though. Copyright infringement isn't stealing because it isn't a zero-sum game. You don't lose the value of a work when someone copies it from you. You get a good knife and they get a good knife that they made with their own tools and their own materials. Also, it isn't exactly very "Red" for someone in China to act as though he ought to be able to do and make whatever the heck he wants with his own forge or with his own factory without having you or the US telling him what he can and can't do.
Now as to whether mass production of any utilitarian tools really honestly qualifies as copyright infringement is a whole other question. In most cases, it probably doesn't. A knife is a really difficult thing to copyright. The reason is that the simpler and the more readily intuitive the nature of the design (the shape of a blade?) the more likely it wasn't copied in the first place. (Heaven forbid someone in "Red China" had the same idea independently!!) On the other hand, the more complex and mechanical the design is (a folding or locking mechanism), the more likely it's covered by patent and not copyright.
In either case, if they regularly do business with many of the same companies you feel they are infringing upon, then it's not unlikely that a number of agreements are in place, written, verbal, or implied. In this case you have a LOT to prove up before you can go calling someone a thief.
Now this might be off point in a knife forum, but since you raised the issue, copyright and patents are based on civil agreements about what is economically expedient and have little to do with inherent moral right to intellectual property. This is seen when looking at their historical development and their legal grounding. The purpose of the earliest copyright law, the Statute of Anne, was to serve as a protection for the publishing guilds for the political benefit of the crown, and it offered zero protection to the content creators. The purpose of the US copyright system is stated in the US Constitution: to promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts. From a legal perspective it is a national agreement that although you ought to be able to copy whatever you want, we as a people want to offer incentives for invention by granting a limited-term monopoly to artists and inventors. Thomas Jefferson strongly resisted both copyrights and patents as morally and economically harmful. It's interesting to me that our society has turned a full 180 on the subject in so little time. Monopolies were once seen as villainous and tyrannical, and we now view them as our god-given right. Well that's enough of that for a knife forum anyway.
As to whether I know what I am talking about, it's hard to say. You might be right.
