For furniture designers, protecting intellectual property is challenging—IP laws for furniture in the US don’t protect function, so designers have to prove a unique element in their design to qualify for a patent. And even when a patent is obtained, its protections often do not apply in different regions—not very useful in a global marketplace. Companies who rip off classics benefit because they can skip the years-long product development phase and often have an easier time selling their versions because consumers are already familiar with the look. 

To combat the spread of cheap knock-offs a five-year-old consortium of furniture manufacturers and design firms called BeOriginal Americas has been training US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers to distinguish real Eames, Starck, and Mies van der Rohe designs from fakes, among others. It’s working: According to CBP’s Intellectual Property Rights Seizure Statistics report (pdf, p.5), in 2016, customs officials confiscated 42 shipments of unauthorized replicas worth an estimated $4.2 million. In the same report, the CBP claimed that their “furniture enforcement efforts have helped to protect over 8,000 American jobs” a figure calculated according to workforce data provided to them by US furniture manufacturers.