While cloning makes sense to an individual actor, it has a harmful effect on the market overall. If cloning is rampant, then innovation is discouraged. Why spen

While cloning makes sense to an individual actor, it has a harmful effect on the market overall. If cloning is rampant, then innovation is discouraged. Why spend the time and resources to find things out for yourself when you can just wait for some other schmuck to figure it out and then copy them? Of course as this process continues, there are fewer and fewer schmucks who will feel the need to create thoughtful, carefully-considered products. Copying can be discouraged through legal means, but the results are usually unsatisfactory (witness our ongoing strife over technology patents). A culture where copying is viewed as shameful has the advantage that most situations never need to devolve into actual legal action. Companies will voluntarily avoid copying one another (in an obvious or crass manner) to avoid damaging their brand.