Quote Originally Posted by wisejd View Post
Within the Leather Shoppe's web site, under the "American Heritage" Brand nearly all their Sofas and Chairs are direct copies of Hancock and Moore designs. Perhaps the industry has this phenomena often and the originating manufacturers of the designs just don't want to spend their time and money in court. Traditional H&M customers aren't exactly the type to be happy with a copy product.
I've always loved the classic mid century modern pieces & a lot, if not ALL of those are copied to various degrees of the originals. If you look at some of the better versions of the replicas the retailer has almost always put in fine print at the bottom of the item description "This is not a Knoll/Herman Miller/etc product and is in no way affiliated with ..." It's very hard to copyright or patent a furniture design & it makes it easy for anyone out there with the acumen to build a piece of furniture nearly identical to another piece, to go right on ahead & do it.

It's different than a Chanel or Louis Vuitton handbag where anyone knocking those off & putting the name brand labels on them will immediately be set upon by the higher ups at those companies.

What I find so interesting in this particular case, is that Leather Shoppes is not saying anywhere this sofa is akin to the H&M Sundance, yet they're naming theirs the Sundance & using H&M's photos to represent their product. And yet, with their in house label "American Heritage," they're outright copying RH's Maxwell & Lancaster sofas AND saying so in their descriptions & names...so, why the sneakiness with the H&M stuff, but not the RH stuff??