Sony has copyright case dismissed as Chinese debut gets underway

China refuses to defend SCE design classic.

Posted by Staff
Sony has copyright case dismissed as Chinese debut gets underway
After a two-decade boycott by the games industry at large, China is currently seeing the roll-out of both the Xbox and the PlayStation 2, and given new status as trustee by Sony and Microsoft. This followed endemic software and hardware piracy in the country that made commercial videogame releases untenable.

However, all is not going smoothly for Sony. It recently took an electrical manufacturer to court over alleged copy infringement of its original PlayStation design. The machine, not named by the courts on Sony’s insistence, is a VCD player, in a shell that closely resembles the PlayStation. But its case was rejected, due to the fact that the machine does not play videogames.

Sony’s counter-argument was that it was up to the courts to protect possible purchasers of the VCD player, who might mistake it for a PlayStation. SCE’s legals also hinted at the fact that over 90% of VCD’s contain pirated material in China.

Sony is likely to appeal against the decision.
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