Plagiarism lawsuits don’t seem to occur in the world of perfumery. This is good news for fragrance houses, else writs would be hurled left right and centre. As the exact formulae for perfumes are always very well guarded anyway (Estée Lauder phobically added the final 5% of ingredients herself behind closed doors to ensure secrecy), intellectual theft in the invisible, ephemeral world of scent would just too much for jurors, judges and witnesses to handle – the stench and olfactory confusion in a closed courthouse is easy to imagine.
Opium was a direct challenge to the insipid sport greens that were taking over the perfume world, and in its criminally erotic complexity, was daring, of the moment; dynamic. So was Cinnabar, which was undoubtedly a copy of Opium. But there are important differences, which I will come to. Opium’s mandarin/jasmine/husking tiger’s breath/amber-cinnamon template was copied and remodelled, redeveloped with varying…
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