My wife and I planned a vacation to South East Asia. As a precaution against contracting an infection of Hepatitis A virus, we decided to get inoculated with Havix. Havix is produced by SmithKline Beecham Pharma Inc. The vaccine is 3 times as effective in preventing Hepatitis A as it's competition: products utilizing immune globulin.

I contacted our physician, and was told to go to a drug store, pick up the serum and bring it to his office to be administered. I stopped by our local drug store, and asked for enough Havix for my wife and I to be inoculated. The pharmacist rang up the purchase and presented me with a bill for over three hundred dollars. I was shocked by the price...but considering the potential consequences of not being inoculated, paid for the drug.

Havix is an example of a product which is not imitable. SmithKline Beecham Pharma Inc. have a patent on the vaccine and a copyright on the name "Havix". These are isolating mechanisms sufficiently strong to prevent imitation.

Prozac is an anti-depressant drug manufactured by Eli Lilly Company. Since it's approval by the FDA and it's introduction, sales have skyrocketed. People are taking the drug not only for depression, but also to enhance their normal personality.

On March 20, 1996 the patent protection for the drug ended. Immediately Novopharm Ltd., Apotex Inc., and Nu-Pharm Ltd. began shipping generic products identical to Prozac in every way but color. Eli Lilly Company appealed to the courts for copyright protection of the distinctive shape and color of their generic Prozac. However the competitors claim in the name of patient safety the right to sell their products in the same shape and color as Prozac.

The marketing of Prozac is an example of product which is partially non-imitable. Even though Eli Lilly Company does not have patent protection, the company has been able to create isolating mechanisms of brand name, shape and color.

In 1897 a German industrial chemist named Felix Hoffman synthesized acetylsalicylic. The company he worked for was Bayer and Company, and they named the new product aspirin. Today, Americans consume about 80 billion aspirin tablets a year.

The problem for Bayer is that the majority of these tablets are made by competitors. Aspirin has become so much a part of our language that Webster's dictionary does not even link the word to the Bayer Company.

Aspirin is an example of a product which is completely imitable. The product has no isolating mechanisms, and in fact has become synonymous with the generic product.