Vietnam’s Chinese-owned CanDo has been brazenly copying Canon’s consumer products for the past five years, initially targeting the Chinese market but more recently introducing its own new products – even displaying the Canon brand – and launching them into grey markets in the US and Canada.

While CanDo initially built an impressive record by making products that, in the eyes of consumers, were “better than the real thing”, in the past two years CanDo have had iPod-like success with their radical new designs for PDAs and disposable phones. CanDo has created brand loyalty and business results that have made even Apple’s iPod success seem modest. Canon’s most recent financial results on the other hand show a company in deep trouble.

With Canon’s court battle against CanDo infringements still stuck in US courts, it is hardly surprising that CanDo’s US$ 3 billion bid for Canon was accepted so readily. CanDo have announced that the new company will be known as Canon CanDo.

This is the first known case of a ‘reverse takeover’ by an IP pirate but is sure to start a whole new wave of copy-cat entrepreneurs.

When the market economy turns out to be more efficient than the legal system it’s no wonder that the rules of the ‘flat world’ are being re-written every day.