Supercopy/Lacoste

With Supercopy/Lacoste, SUPERFLEX turns a copied product into a Supercopy - a new original. The Supercopy challenges the intellectual property rights of corporate brand owners, who regulate acts of reproduction and distribution Supercopy/Lacoste suggests that mass unauthorized copying, rather than undermining the original as copyright law suggests, actually enhances it. In response to this work, Lacoste took legal action against SUPERFLEX for copyright and trademark infringement in Denmark; this legal action was eventually settled. On the backside of the image, there are nine A4 papers comprising the legal agreement between SUPERFLEX and Lacoste.  

The market of copies especially thrives off of the fashion brand economy, wherein a product’s value is reliant upon its supposed irreproducibility. This market of fashion forfeits is perhaps equally as lucrative as its rival market of original demand. Supplying thousands of people with jobs, the impact of the copy economy on the daily life of people, especially in the eastern part of the world, is immense. The law tends to undermine and criminalize this marketing, an effort to preserve the original and punish the copy. But once released into the public, these copy products develop a life of their own, and go on to influence the desires and habits of consumers, becoming reborn as new originals.