Dbrand, a device customisation company that infamously told Sony to “go ahead, sue us” has said that Sony has threatened to sue them.
In a Reddit post, spotted by Eurogamer, titled “Darkplates are dead. Thanks, Sony”, the company revealed some of the details of their correspondence with Sony and offered counterarguments about their rights to produce the dark faceplates.
In a cease and desist letter, lawyers representing Sony accuse the company of infringing on their copyright, as well as counterfeiting Sony’s products.
In the letter, Sony’s lawyers assert that: “Affixing a counterfeit version of our client’s logo is certain to cause consumers to mistakenly believe that dbrand’s product was produced by, licensed by or otherwise affiliated with SIE and, as a result, constitutes a blatant infringement of SIE’s rights under trademark and copyright law in the PlayStation Family Mark.”
Later in the letter, Sony claim that Dbrands spin on the PlayStation symbols infringement upon their copyright.
“Indeed, dbrand concedes that this design is an ‘apocalyptic spin on’ SIE’s protected trademark and acknowledges that the PlayStation Shapes Logo is both ‘familiar’ to dbrand’s customer base and sufficiently famous to be called ‘classic PlayStation button shapes’.”
In response to this allegation, in the post, which inexplicably ends with Dbrand referring to the Japanese gaming giant as terrorists, the company brings up the recent Netflix mega-hit Squid Game as a means to defend themselves, saying: “Sony believes our distinctive & original ‘Illuminati Pyramid / Radiation Hazard / Skull & Crossbones / Angry Robot Head’ symbols, engraved inside the Darkplates, infringe on their trademarked button shapes? How the fuck did Squid Game get away with it?”
The post even includes a comparison between the three:
Dbrand goes on to speculate that Sony intends to sell its own faceplates: “Our suspicion is that #3 is the actual reason Sony is going down this road. If Sony was seeking to monopolize the “replacement side panels for the PlayStation 5” market, the last thing they’d want is a robot-shaped elephant in the room.
As far as conspiracy theories go, this is much closer to “Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself” than to “the COVID-19 vaccine has 5G microchips inside of it.” Let’s examine the chronology:
- First, Sony launches a white PlayStation 5, white DualSense controllers and a white Pulse 3D headset.
- Next, Sony launches black DualSense controllers.
- After that, Sony launches a black Pulse 3D headset.
- We’ll let you speculate on what’s being blacked out next.”
The rant ends with the company conceding that it’ll have to stop production on Darkplates, but says that it may intend to take further action on the matter:
“Instead of answering it, let’s get to the point: we’ve elected to submit to the terrorists’ demands… for now. While we strongly believe in the consumer’s right to customize and modify their hardware with aftermarket components, your Darkplates are now a collector’s item. You know what they say – you either die a Darkplates owner, or you live long enough to see yourself become the scalper. In closing, fuck you and especially fuck Sony. Talk soon.”
Sony has yet to comment on the issue at this time.
In other news, a Final Fantasy XIV player has managed to play the game using a Nintendo Ring Fit controller.
The post Replacement PS5 faceplate company says Sony threatened to sue them appeared first on NME.
