Recently, Porsche China executives lamented that car companies in the Chinese automobile manufacturing industry are bluntly copying its brand design.

The group said their unique design aesthetics have been imitated by many car companies in recent years, and the external shape is easy to replicate, but the brand core and design heritage are difficult to replace.

This statement quickly fermented on the Internet, and also attracted public figure Luo Yonghao to respond publicly. He did not deny that domestic new energy vehicle companies have a design reference to Porsche, and also admitted that this is a normal stage that is difficult to avoid in the early stage of industry development.

But in his opinion, Porsche’s accusation that domestic car companies tend to be homogeneous in design imitation is somewhat exaggerated, and there is no need to put on a posture of grievance and helplessness.

Luo Yonghao also dug up Porsche’s design past in its early years, pointing out that the brand itself has also had the experience of borrowing from other companies’ designs. In the early years, many Porsche models were benchmarked against the Czechoslovakian Tatra model in terms of appearance design.

At that time, Taitola was ready to launch an infringement lawsuit with complete evidence, and seeing that the lawsuit was about to be won, the situation took an unexpected turn. In the thirties of the last century, with the change of the geographical pattern, the Taitola factory was taken over, and the model as a key evidence of infringement was ordered to stop production.

In the early years, many Porsche models were benchmarked against the Czechoslovakian Tatra model in terms of appearance design

After the war, Taitola’s company restarted the patent protection process again. It was not until 1965 that Volkswagen came forward to mediate out of court, and finally paid Tatra 1 million West German marks, settling the long-standing design infringement dispute in the form of financial compensation.

This compensation also confirms the fact that Porsche had design reference infringement in the early days. Luo Yonghao bluntly said that domestic car companies follow the trend and imitate it is indeed not glorious, but if it comes to the past behavior of this kind of industry, Porsche is not qualified to condescendingly accuse others.

This air debate also attracted many netizens to participate in the discussion, and some netizens put forward their views from a logical point of view, believing that responding to accusations on the grounds that the other party had also made mistakes is a deviation in logical argument, and does not face the controversy itself imitated by the current car companies.

In response to netizens’ comments, Luo Yonghao also gave a straightforward response, he clearly recognized that the imitation itself was not decent, but he did not agree with Porsche’s attitude of unilaterally complaining and amplifying the controversy.

Some netizens also pointed out that even if Porsche had infringement in its early years and was compensated 1 million Sid Marks, it was also that year, there was a legal conclusion and a compensation result, and at present, domestic car companies copied Porsche designs without any compensation.

An emotional speech by an industry executive extended the in-depth discussion of the design inheritance and reference of car companies, and also made Volkswagen begin to re-examine the complex relationship between design imitation, patent protection and industry growth in the development process of the automotive industry.