How do different brands get away with copying the exact same product from a competitor then simply renaming it?
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Patent, copyrights and trademarks are a pretty complicated topic.
The thing is, it is very hard to patent, non-novel and obvious things. So if you build some fancy product with a couple of buttons and a dial – the mere fact of there being buttons and dials is typically non-novel and cannot be patented.
If a product is a box, painted blue with a simple on-off switch on it, the actual look of that box is probably not patentable. It is too obvious and not novel.
But if the physical arrangements are novel and useful – say a controller for a Playstation, then it likely qualifies for protection.
If someone designed a brand new way to make potato chips involving a novel new process, that specific method might be protected but that protection does not extend on all forms of potato chips.
This is way too complicated a matter for ELI5.
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