Duck, duck, goose. I mean, duck

Whoa—this gigantic rubber ducky story has, uh, legs.

You’ll recall that the duck made headlines when it deflated in Hong Kong Harbour. (Evidently it was indeed down for maintenance and has been reinvigorated.)

But it seems that oversized yellow rubber water fowl, bearing a suspiciously-strong resemblance to the installation piece by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, have been, ah, popping up in multiple cities in the Chinese mainland.

And there may be “copyright issues” involved.

There are a couple of things I find interesting about that:

The idea that a pretty ubiquitous bathtub toy that’s been around since, well, since there’ve been bathtubs (kinda) is protected by copyright, is curious. Would size be the determinant in any dispute over this?

There are apparently intellectual property lawyers in China. Well, at least one, in Beijing. Who’d have thunk?

Hofman’s feathers are reported to be ruffled, & he was quoted as saying, “If they want the real duck, they’ll have to come to me.”

That’s not a sentence you get to repeat very often.