It's rare to see an honest-to-goodness fight break out, and likely even more rare to see one start among product designers. But, when you think about it, maybe really it isn't so strange. There are certain ideas that float around in the ether and suddenly twelve people are all creating near-identical things. That's what we were thinking as we read this interesting back-and-forth on Reluct yesterday. What started as a "ain't this a neat lamp?" post, suddenly turned into a "you stole my idea!" and "no I did not!" argument between designers Chris Kabel and Constantin Wortmann from Buro fur Form. Here's some from the beginning:

A few years ago I was approached by a German lighting company about producing it. Unfortunately production costs were too high so it was blown off. But it turns out that an employee of this lighting company started working for next sometime after. Apparently he took the sketches and proposed it to his new boss. Off course his boss was delighted with the idea and decided to produce it. This is not the way to go obviously. Therefore I am are preparing a legal suit against this company.