I’m not in a happy mood when I wrote this but whatevs, this is my last day of exam. Luckily, it’s piece of cake 🙂 The subject is Business and Professional Ethics. There is one question about Copyright Law and I gave an example about the POLO brand. Do you know POLO? A shirt brand with a horse in their logo? I used to think that this POLO is part of Ralph Lauren. Turned out that I was wrong.
Actually from my past working days in Batam, I was informed that there is a difference between POLO and Polo Ralph Lauren. Basically POLO is kinda like an imitation Ralph Lauren only available in Indonesia. Reason being is that an Indon Businessman registered the business name POLO in Indonesia long before Polo Ralph Lauren penetrated into the Indonesian market. So the brand POLO actually refers to a local POLO brand and is original from that perspective. However, for the Ralph Lauren products, you need to buy it from the shops which bear the full name Polo Ralph Lauren as due to copyrights law, Ralph Lauren is not able to use the term POLO in Indon by itself.
I think the paragraph above explain everything. You can read the complete discussion here. So basically the POLO brand that you find easily on high-end department stores, malls, airports, even every corner of Bali’s busy street is Indonesian Brand, not from America. In Indonesia, POLO costs about $35-50, when Polo by Ralph Lauren costs $100-150, a big difference huh? No wonder the tourist that came to Indonesia felt really happy when they see the price tag!
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t buy the one that made from Indonesia, I just think it’s shallow to do such thing like that. If you want to build a brand, build one. Not copycat one big brand and fool everyone about your brand. And more importantly, it violates copyright law because they’re using the same brand and logo.
Wingu 9 
