In the Netherlands this week, a court drew a line between inspiration and imitation, ordering discount retailer Lidl to remove five sandal models that too closely echoed Birkenstock's iconic footbed design. The ruling — carrying daily fines and compensation orders — is part of a wider European reckoning over who owns the visual language of design, and whether mass-market reproduction of distinctive forms constitutes a kind of quiet theft. As courts across the continent grapple with where function ends and creative authorship begins, the question is less about sandals than about the value socie