I'm not here talking about the products being defective and harmful (because that happens a lot too), but about the knockoffs ruining the lives of the original product inventors/owners.
Some time ago a young American entrepreneur had an idea for and made an invention of a collapsible "selfie stick", which solved one of the biggest annoyances about those sticks (which were highly popular especially back then): Even foldable ones were a pain to carry around and handle. So he invented a multi-part telescoping selfie-stick that collapses into the phone case itself, taking essentially no space, being always available, and was impossible to lose (because it was attached to the phone itself, or the phone protective case to be more precise.)
He created a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development and manufacturing of the project. However, he made two major mistakes: He didn't patent it (not that that would have stopped the Chinese copycats, but at least he would have had a lot more legal standing and proof or originality), and he took way too long to actually develop the thing. And, in fact, he also made a third mistake: Revealing in too much detail how his invention worked.
It didn't take long for Chinese product pirates to copy his idea and manufacture and sell their own, way before his Kickstarter had even reached its target goal or he had even produced a single sellable product.
Why did this ruin his life? Because it ruined his reputation.
People, including his backers, who did pretty much zero research, when they found out about the Chinese shops selling that exact product (even using his own pictures of it!) assume that he was the copycat, that he was trying to copy or dropship an existing product. In other words, that he was a scammer trying to fund and sell some existing product as if it were his own invention. He got a ton of accusations of being a scammer and copycat himself, and many of his backers demanded a refund.
His reputation was ruined also in another way: Many people who saw the product being sold online assumed that it was his product (after all, the Chinese copycats had stolen and were using his pictures and in some cases even his very name to sell the product) and purchased it.
As you might guess, Chinese knockoffs are notorious for their poor quality, and very soon these people found out about all the flaws that the knockoff product had (such as the joint at the end of the stick that's supposed to allow the phone to be freely rotated but stiff enough to keep it in place, not being strong enough for it, so it couldn't keep a heavy phone in place, as well as many other defects due to poor design and manufacturing.) These people blamed the poor guy who had nothing to do with those products and whose idea had been stolen, and wrote scathing reviews in his kickstarter page. Cue even more demands for refunds by other backers.
On top of everything else, he also failed to create the product himself (it's not known if all those copycats had an effect on this, eg. destroying his motivation), making the situation even worse than it already was. Even the backers who did not fall for the copycats have not got their product.
Sometimes Chinese knockoffs don't only steal your ideas and products, but they can also ruin your reputation in the process.
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