Imitation has been controlled by patent rights, where an object did not need to be an exact copy but merely use the essence of an idea to count as a violation.

Imitation has been controlled by patent rights, where an object did not need to be an exact copy but merely use the essence of an idea to count as a violation. Of course so far this protection has only been applied to inventions, because they took a lot of time to develop but once done could be trivially copied at a glance. Now, in this new landscape, we may find it appropriate to apply a similar regime to art. Or maybe we won't. It's a choice for society to make, to balance how much we need to protect the incentives to create something new vs protect the ease of copying.