Even though legally Walmart was found to be not guilty and there was no violation of the law their conduct seems to be largely unethical. Ethics can be a murky subject especially when conducting business. Many people find numerous reasons and loopholes within many aspects of business to include international trade, competition, sales, and marketing. In my opinion ethics are something that can be agreed upon by many until money is involved. According to most ethical and moral theories I would argue that they conducted business very unethically. Kantian ethics or duty ethics are based on universal rules. The categorical imperative best describes this theory, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Now using this "theory" to gauge what Walmart did, I would argue want they did was unethical. They clearly used some "dirty" tactics to create some knock off products based on Samara's design. This inherently caused some economical damage to Samara because they were undercut by Walmart's prices and probably outsold because Walmart's massive retail market.

One could also argue that based on Utilitarian Ethics that the greatest number of people benefited from what Walmart did because they helped expand their market and provided a product to more people that Samara could on its own. However, this only holds so much water because they exclude Samara Brothers Inc. as they suffered economically. What they could've done is built a compromise that involved potentially taking on Samara as a supplier and benefiting the larger majority.

How would you challenge this?