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IP Wave This Weekend: Fake It Till You Make It

IP Wave This Weekend: Fake It Till You Make It
Photo by Laurentiu Morariu / Unsplash

It’s a bright Sunday morning in Daryaganj. The book market is packed. A first-year Delhi University student, backpack slung over one shoulder, scans a pile of photocopied textbooks stacked on a rickety wooden table. The original version of the economics book she needs costs ₹2,500. The photocopy? ₹250. It’s not even a decision. She hands over the cash and walks away, guilt-free.

Image credit: So Delhi

A few kilometres away from our office, in SDA Market, a small pizzeria is doing brisk business under the name Dominic, similar logo, similar box, but a pizza for ₹120 instead of ₹300.

Image Credit: IndiaTimes

This is Delhi's intellectual property dilemma: a city where copyright rules are written but not obeyed; where enforcement exists on paper but the streets operate on very different rationale. According to conventional economic theory, copyright and trademark regulations exist to foster innovation and guard originality. Giving creators exclusive rights will help them to earn from their work, reinvest, and create more. But in Delhi's bustling unofficial markets, copyright sometimes serves more as a barrier than a source of income.

Even university professors distribute PDFs of expensive textbooks, turning copyright violation into a necessity rather than a crime. If laws fail to shape behaviour, are they achieving their purpose at all?

Delhi’s markets reflect something closer to economic Nobel Prize Winner Elinor Ostrom’s theory of the commons(it's a good read, btw), where communities create their own governance systems for shared resources. The photocopied book market is not just about piracy; it is an informal knowledge economy, where access dictates value rather than legal ownership. Copyright law may protect intellectual property, but it does little to protect the student who simply needs to learn. Just as books are copied, so are brands.

Image credit: LBB

Walk through Sarojini Market, and you’ll find a street lined with shops selling “Nike” shoes, “Gucci” handbags, and “Ray-Ban” sunglasses, none of them original, all of them selling briskly.

Small restaurants slap international brand names on their storefronts, knowing full well they aren’t fooling anyone. Customers know they aren’t buying from the real sellers, but the name is an assurance of quality.

This isn’t just a Delhi phenomenon. China, too, has a booming market for counterfeit brands, but as its economy grew, enforcement tightened. But in both countries, the real and fake continue to coexist, each serving a different economic class.

When Laws and Markets Pull in Opposite Directions

The legal system assumes that well-defined property rights make markets function efficiently, yet Delhi’s economy shows that when IP laws clash with economic necessity, necessity wins every time. A pirated book isn’t just cheaper; it’s the only option. A fake Nike shoe isn’t about deception; it’s about aspiration. These are market failures, but not in the way classical economics defines them. They aren’t failures of supply or demand, but of willingness to enforce the rules in environment where institutional mechanisms are still being developed. The formal economy sets rules that the informal economy finds ways around.

IP assumes that restricting access increases value. In Delhi, it does the opposite. Price sensitivity dictates behaviour more than legal threats ever could. No police crackdown or intellectual property lawsuit will change the fact that when an original book costs ten times as much as a pirated copy, consumers will always choose the pirated version.

Somewhere in a basement office near ITO, a small publishing house is struggling. It follows the law, sells original books, and pays its writers and designers fairly. It prints limited copies, pricing them to cover costs and make a modest profit. But sales are low. Every book it prints has a cheaper, photocopied version being sold on the streets. It knows this, but it cannot afford to lower prices any further.

A few kilometres away, a street bookseller is counting his earnings for the day. He does not think of himself as a pirate or a criminal. To him, he is simply in the business of knowledge distribution. The original publisher calls it infringement; he calls it necessity.

The question, then, is not whether Delhi follows copyright or trademark laws. The question is whether those laws are written for Delhi at all.

Till then, Delhi will continue to be known by its other name, as the capital of counterfeit.

Round Ups

How to take better decisions?

If you're reading this, you might be someone who wants to make better decisions in life. This approach, originally used by early tech entrepreneur Patrick Collison, was later adapted into a matrix by economist Taylor Pearson. He suggests that most people aren't necessarily bad at decision-making in general but often make choices that are contextually misaligned. Give it a read!

How IP intersects with economics

Credit: Composite by Stan Murgolo/U.S. Copyright Office, using licensed Shutterstock images

If you’re interested in how intellectual property shapes creativity and the economy, this conversation with the Copyright Office’s Chief Economist is worth a read. It explores how copyright influences innovation, creative output, and even AI’s impact on economic frameworks. Whether you’re curious about policy, economic incentives, or the future of creative industries, this deep dive is for you. My piece this week was inspired by reading this interview—check it out!

What Your Walking Speed Says About You

If you’re interested in how physical spaces shape behaviour, this one’s for you. Steve Jobs designed Pixar’s offices to encourage chance encounters, and researchers now say our urban spaces affect how we move and interact. Walking speeds are up, lingering is down - what does that mean for creativity and connection? Read it here on economist Elaine Schwartz's blog.

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By Farheen

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