Plagiarius Campaign

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Zieher supports the campaign against plagiarism as a sustaining member of the "Plagiarius Campaign: Innovation vs. Imitation"



Every visitor of the Ambiente fair in Frankfurt has already noticed him: circa 1.80m high, black head, black clothes, black cap and a golden nose: Plagiarius.

A black dwarf as a symbol for the black sheep who are pirating other people’s ideas in order to fill their own pockets (in German culture the golden nose symbolises enrichment at other people’s cost).

Dreaded by plagiarists, this negative award was called into life by Rido Busse in 1977, after he had discovered an exact copy of the company Soehnle’s letter and diet scale Nr. 8600 at the spring fair in Frankfurt. The device had been developed by Busse Design Ulm Ltd. and was launched on the market by Soehnle in 1965. Busse decided to create a negative award within the frame of a press conference, to make the public as well as the representatives of the law aware of the malpractice of plagiarism, and of the negative effects plagiarism and falsification have on the economy. Since then the "Plagiarius" has become an award price given to the cheekiest plagiarists at a press conference during the Ambiente fair.

ZIEHER supports the campaign against product piracy, which is why we have joined the Plagiarius Campaign as a sustaining member. We see innovation and good product design as the only possibility to establish ourselves as a brand and to differentiate ourselves from competitors. In times of increasing problems with product piracy, seeing a continually growing number of faked products, the protection of genuine innovations is steadily gaining in importance.
All our own product developments are protected within Europe through registration as design patents at the HABM (harmonization office for the EC domestic market) in Alicante/Spain or through publication on the internet platform "Designpublisher".