Copying products doesn’t lead to unjust enrichment

Making and marketing shoes very similar to those of another company does not lead to “unjust enrichment,” according to an Israeli Supreme Court decision noted in a new bulletin by Avi Ordo of S. Horowitz & Co.  (Free registration required.)

The Israeli court held, says Ordo, that unjust enrichment requires “(i) enrichment on the part of the defendant; (ii) that the enrichment of the defendant emanates from the plaintiff; and (iii) that the enrichment of the defendant is unlawful.”  Since copying someone else’s product is not, absent some kind of intellectual property infringement claim, unlawful, the plaintiff was out of luck.