Last week i saw a add for copyed design chairs, really cheap. This is because the patents have ran out the copy rights have gone. So anyone can make them, with one exception. You can not change the design. This for me is really the what industrial design is about. the copy. Mass production, there is no original.
Perhaps a new insight
Unless you get a far Easternern manufactured one (where the copy right seems to make no difference to these guys
) these copies give the average Joe a chance to own a a little bit of good design. Only draw back is of course you are 50 years or so behind the times, or you are catching the 2nd or 3rd wave of the products popularity. Also you get the oppotunity to own what looks like an antique. 
