That's necessary if your USB device is unique. If your device is an instance of a known standard class (keyboard, storage device, speaker, etc.) there's a generic ID.[1] You only need a PID if your device needs its own driver.
Is that true? I thought that you still needed a VID/PID, but you could use generic drivers if you support the proper HID or alternate interface types (ie: generic USB camera / speakers).
There are a bunch of USB device classes with generic drivers that will work even with an unrecognized VID/PID. Mass Storage and HID (keyboard/mouse) are the most common ones.
I have only experimented a little, but it seems that unless your device requires a special driver, you can use the VID/PID of another device that doesn't require a special driver (e.g. some generic keyboards), there won't be any problems. There are probably horrible corner cases that I haven't encountered, though, so don't do this.
[1] http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/devclass_docs