Does Imitation Spark Innovation In the World of Cuisine?

From the shopping mall to the corner bistro, knockoffs are everywhere in today’s marketplace. Conventional wisdom holds that copying kills creativity, and that laws that protect against copies are essential to innovation–and economic success. But are copyrights and patents always necessary? In The Knockoff Economy, Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman provocatively argue that creativity can not only survive in the face of copying, but can thrive.

Copying versus Creativity

In the spring of...