Plagiarism in Design

The best part about design is if a designer sees another design and likes it, well likes it enough to copy it, it could be called inspiration and not copied.

Normally this goes unnoticed because the copied object has been derived subtly or has been taken from a different source like car design from nature or fashion design or the human body. But what if the copier and the copied both hail from Industrial Design. Is it still inspiration or has the line been crossed into blatant plagiarism. One guaranteed argument will be Appropriation in Post Modernism. But that argument would only hold for art and not design/mass produced design. Design is that thin red line that separates appropriation from plagiarism. Jeremy Clarkson defined art during the review of the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione as, "for something to be art it can have no other purpose than itself". Mass produced design isn't art ergo its not appropriation but is it copied? On the left we have designs by Dieter Rams, designer for Braun in the 50s and 60s and on the right we have Jonathan Ive's designs for Apple.