"In many sectors, copying is more or less accepted as a business strategy. Products that look, taste, and sound suspiciously like 'originals' abound in upscale chain restaurants, fashion outlets, and contemporary architecture. And such industries typically regard the pervasive piracy as a spur...

From the shopping mall to the corner bistro, knockoffs are everywhere in today's marketplace. Conventional wisdom holds that copying kills creativity, and that laws that protect against copies are essential to innovation -- and economic success. But are copyrights and patents always necessary?...