ataradov
You are missing a major point.
FTDI did not even have the right to harm the chip they created.
They do not own the chip any longer as it has been SOLD.
I don't quite agree with that.
As I said, I reckon FTDI's decision was kind of inept for various reasons, but they were not "harming" the chips they sold. They were kind of disabling the counterfeit ones, not the genuine products.
This was not necessarily smart, but the idea was probably to force the manufacturers using counterfeit chips (and in turn the counterfeiters) to be harmed. And if customers had been smart that's exactly what should have happened. They should have gotten back at the dubious manufacturers way before getting back at FTDI. The manufacturer is ultimately 100% responsible for what they sell. And those who were unaware of using counterfeit chips were either not having the right supplier selection process or themselves got abused - then they should have gotten back at their supplier, and so on. But I guess most of them were aware and did it to get higher margins. Let's not be excessively naive.
Truth is, until customers actually notice there is a problem, nobody cares about using illegal stuff when it lowers costs, and nobody cares whether the cloned stuff works as well as the genuine or not. That's the root problem IMO. And quite often, it concerns products that have low margin anyway and it would not be cost effective to take any action against counterfeiting, unless customers stop buying or even ask for refund.
I would consider different classes of cloning though, from what has been mentioned in this thread.
* Clones in the common "PC-world" sense: making functionally-equivalent products but without just plain copying them. This usually works well for the customers, is non-ambiguous (they know they are not buying the original stuff), and often triggers sane competition. Here the cloners are not exactly parasiting the products themselves, but rather their market and ecosystem;
* Copies of products: more or less exact copies that are unauthorized, are usually not quite as reliable as the original, much cheaper and don't try to pass as genuine. The customers know they're buying a clone and accept the risks. Sometimes the copies are not quite as good, but occasionally they offer extra features that make them attractive;
* Counterfeits: copies of products that pass as genuine. This is not only unauthorized copying, but is also misleading for the customers. It's just plain fraud. And when the counterfeit products are sold at the market price of the genuine, it's not just fraud, it's a rip-off.