Strolling down a crowded shopping center recently, I did a double-take before a stall as I realized that what I thought had been an innocuous iPod Nano was not quite what it seemed. Upon closer inspection, I saw some differences, such as the “Play” button in the center instead of the bottom, which is typical of a real iPod Nano dial. But despite the slight alteration in the placement of the function keys, the look, finish and feel of the knockoff makes it impossible to tell apart from Apple Computer’s iPod to the casual observer.

Now, too much ink has been devoted to the real harm of the knockoff trade. In Asia, where imitation products have sprouted like mushrooms on rainy days, this subject has become a big yawn formost of us. Yet there is really a bigger story behind this – touching on the realities of global competition, how technology is transforming our lives, and business ethics. Let’s take the “berry” wars as an example.

What is black and red all over? RedBerry: China Unicom Ltd’s ripoff of Research in Motion (RIM) Ltd’s BlackBerry, a handheld device that supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, Web browsing and other wireless information services. One wonders in the abstract the real harm of the knockoff trend. Gone are the days when consumers were buying imitations because they could not afford the real McCoy. Today, consumers buy them because they get the same results at a much cheaper price. With the RedBerry service set at less than a dollar a month for a standard 5MB e-mail account (plus a few cents for each e-mail sent), how can BlackBerry’s $64 per month (based on RIM’s rate in Hong Kong) compete with that?

The new wave of copycats surprisingly competes in product features while still capitalizing on the original’s brand name. But having competitors with seemingly similar offerings is nothing new in the industry, what is disturbing is that the brazen copycat is a state-owned company and a major telecommunications player. In an ideal and fair world, the government should be the one pushing trademarks and intellectualy property rights.

This is clearly setback in China’s efforts to prove to the world that its legal system has developed to the point where IP rights can be successfully defended. Over the last few years, the country claimed that its laws and ways of doing business have improved markedly. Last year, Starbucks won a court ruling against a coffee shop in Qingdao that was using an identical logo and Chinese translation of the Starbucks name.

Also, according to a report by the China Achievements Exhibition for IP Protection, 132 countries and regions had filed a total of 2.499 million trademark applications in China by the end of 2005, of which 442,000 applications came from other countries. China’s trademark applications grew on an average of 25.2 percent a year in the first five years of the decade, more than double the growth rate of the country’s gross domestic product. The speed up of changes to the country’s laws is necessary, especially since it claims to have lost $1 billion in disputes over IP rights since it joined the WTO in 2001.

Bear no assumption that trademark infringement is a problem faced solely in China or Asia – it is a borderless problem. We sure know that global competition is a tough game, and sometimes independent innovation is difficult to come by. But one thing is for sure, copying is not likely to get anyone very far in the technology market.