Where is the IPR violation really coming from?!

Chances are, a lot is coming from YOU!  Think about what samples you are sending to your Chinese supplier to “copy” or “make adjustments too?Yup, that’s right.  If you’re in the business of buying 6 or 8 items and copying aspects of each one to create your “own” design/product you are in fact contributing to the rampant IPR violations that is China today.For example, I just spent the day negotiating some new contracts with a factory for a printing project.  We signed NDA’s prior to transferring information and art.  Once the negotiations were done (it’s taken a couple weeks to get this all completed) we walked through the factory with the manager and owner and looked at all the “samples” from US clients that they were “copying” on request from each of their US clients.  The factory says they sign strict NDA’s with each of their clients and so they don’t share any product or art with others.  But they also get “boxes of samples” of both product they’ve manufactured themselves and product from other factories each week from their US clients.The factory is quite good about limiting information; they wouldn’t drop any names, and wouldn’t give me any samples (I always ask to see what they’ll really do when they want a new order) either.  But every one of their clients is sending bucket loads of competitor’s product to the factory and directly asking for copies to be made—some with major some with very minor changes.Indeed we found 4 SKU’s of one of our products in the factory from another one of our own clients (when we have NDA’s we don’t share client names/product with other clients either).It just made me laugh—clients in the US are so worried about Chinese factories stealing their IPR but at the same time are more than willing to violate any and everyone else’s IPR to some degree with the copying of samples.  How many times have I been asked "we just have to change this 10%, right?"Could it be that the evil empire has learned it’s diabolical practices from the very folks complaining about the practices in the first place?