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If the two are completely indistinguishable, it means that the company is on the hook for warranty service.

Worse, it means that the company no longer controls its own distribution channels, pricing or exports.

If the company makes a mid-model change (bug fix, whatever), then it also can't stop shipments of the bad ones.

To corroborate the warranty issue: There's a temporary exhibit at Winterthur in Delaware [0] on the topic of counterfeits. They had a fake Birkin bag next to a genuine article, and apparently the fake had been through an official Hermes cleaning without detection.

[0] http://www.winterthur.org/treasuresontrial

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