Utynam's Heirs
A monthly column devoted to IP curiosities and controversies, named in honour of John of Utynam – who received the world’s first recorded patent in 1449 diary@managingip.com
Buy counterfeits, sell your soul
Anti-counterfeiting organisations try to deter people from buying fakes by stressing the damage to the economy, the dangers of buying inferior products and the risk of funding organised crime.
But an academic study has shown that they may be missing a trick: it seems that buying counterfeits makes you behave more dishonestly and think worse of other people.
Francesca Gino from Kenan-Flagler Business School, Michael Norton of the University of North Carolina and Dan Ariela of Harvard Business School have written a paper on the topic entitled The Counterfeit Self: The Deceptive Costs of Faking It.
The trio conducted a series of experiments in which young, female students were offered money to take part in a series of tests. Before the tests began half the participants were asked to wear real sunglasses and half counterfeit (although, in fact, all the sunglasses were genuine Prada, costing...
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