Genuine Design

I founded the Genuine Design website 10 years ago as a vehicle to promote genuine design in the modern furniture profession. We felt that not only do consumers need to be educated on the importance of buying genuine design, but also architects and interior designers, who are instrumental in getting the message across. Over the years we have become much more assertive in our approach since the practice of selling fakes has become more commonplace among designers, public companies and even museums. We began to name these organizations and post specific “consumer alerts” to put pressure on stopping these illegal and deceptive practices. After much public discredit, we started to see results.

Now we encounter Target - a company who trumpets design and creativity and who fiercely protects their own intellectual property and is actively selling counterfeit Le Corbusier designs on their website. This double standard must stop! We are calling on Target to do the right thing. We are giving them the benefit of the doubt that it was an oversight and that somebody made a bad decision in a very large organization.

Michael Manes

A website called ModernReproductions[dot]com seems to be in the habit of stealing copyrighted photographs to sell counterfeit furniture. They use Fritz Hansen’s images of Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chair to sell their knockoff version, Zanotta’s photograph of the Onda sofa is appropriated to sell a cheap fake, and Artifort’s own images of the Orange Slice chair are being used to peddle a pirated copy.

They even stole this iconic image of Aarnio’s Bubble Chair from Adelta to sell a fake. Hope they have a model release.

Intentionally infringing copyrighted photographs carries a potential criminal penalty of $500,000 fine and up to 5 years in prison for the first offense.

They also violate the trademarked names for many of the products sold on their site. I guess once you start stealing it’s hard to stop.

Their FAQs try to rationalize their behavior by stating that all furniture is “nothing but a copy”. Really? They mean every manufactured product is a copy of an “original” prototype. So every Corvette is a “copy” and only the hand sculpted clay model is the “original”. REALLY!

We won’t link you to these counterfeiters but here are the inks to the real thing.

Fritz Hansen, Zanotta, Artifort, Adelta