A Knife By Any Other Name
The Age
Monday August 8, 1994
The Swiss might have to start selling Chinese checkers. A federal court has decided that the Chinese can sell cheap copies of the famous Swiss army knife - and even call them that.
``Why don't they call it a `Chinese army knife'? They should go with their own name, and not copy ours," said Major-General Hans Schlup, the defence attache at the Swiss embassy in Washington, and the proud owner of Swiss army knives for 35 years.
``It hurt," said Mr James Kennedy, the chairman of the Forschner Group, in Connecticut, which has imported the Swiss-made knives since the 1950s and lost his court fight to stop the Chinese sales. ``Their knife-making is 100 years behind the industrialised world."
Mr Kennedy's firm sells about five million Swiss army knives in the United States each year.
But lawyers for Arrow Trading Company, the company that sells the Chinese-made knives and won the 22 July ruling in the US Court of Appeals, saw it as a victory.
``It's really not such a bad product," said a lawyer, Mr Louis Ederer. ``It's a product that sells for a much lower price than the Swiss product sells for, and its quality is commensurate with its price."
The original Swiss version, known for its high quality and precision, has been made since the turn of the century by two Swiss factories - Victorinox Cutlery Co and Wenger SA. But the Swiss version was never trademarked.
``American soldiers returning from Europe after World War II coined the phrase Swiss army knife to describe the ingenious pocketknives used by the Swiss military," the court noted. Today, the knife is practically a celebrity, displayed at the New York Museum of Modern Art, sent into space and offered as gifts by US presidents.
When the Chinese began marketing an inexpensive pocketknife in 1992 that mimicked the knife's distinctive look - the red color, the emblem and embossed with the words ``Swiss Army" - lawyers for Forschner went to court, arguing that the Chinese knife would confuse buyers and hurt their sales and reputation.
Forschner hired a University of Florida professor, who produced market research to show that 43 per cent of consumers shown the Chinese-made knife - without knowing its origin - assumed it was of high quality and Swiss origin.
- Washington Post.
© 1994 The Age