Canadian company dbrand, a manufacturer of cases and skins for popular brands such as iPhone, Samsung, and Google Pixel, challenged Sony with their third party PlayStation 5 replacement plates, stating: “Go ahead, sue us.” Dbrand revealed their plan to sell the plates on Reddit back in December 2020 and were full of bravado even then.
The product page on their official website is full of boisterous challenges to the gaming and tech giant. One such quote follows a rather confident boast on how they should be retroactively rewarded every single Nobel Peace Prize for their design: “With the release of Darkplates, the unthinkable has happened: we’ve taken Sony’s monumental achievement in bad design… and fixed it. We can only assume that our prizes are in the mail.”
It’s particularly interesting that dbrand would make such comments considering the past history of Sony successfully taking down other similar products released over the years. Last year, those behind the PlateStation5.com site was forced to remove any PS5 imagery as well as change their name after Sony threatened the company with legal action, and eventually stopped selling the product altogether.
But it seems that dbrand has an answer to that as well, according to a topic header on their site titled Totally Legal. “When you look at this microscopic texture inside the Darkplates, what do you see? If your answer is ‘a familiar-but-legally-distinct apocalyptic spin on the classic PlayStation button shapes,’ you might be one of our lawyers.” And according to their site, their product has sold through its first three waves, with more stock coming in May of this year.
Published: Feb 13, 2021 02:31 pm