Dbrand is suing Casetify for ripping off its Teardown designs - The Verge
Dbrand is suing Casetify for ripping off its Teardown designs - The Verge
Dbrand spotted some of its Easter eggs in Casetify’s designs.
Dbrand has a really strong case here IMO, since they pretty heavily edit the internals and add a few easter eggs, which are still visible in Casetify's final designs
Dbrand discovered Casetify allegedly copied 117 different designs, down to the many digital manipulations it made to the images. Dbrand says it holds registered copyrights for each of these products, all of which were registered before Casetify’s product launch.
Also, TIL:
Disclosure: The Verge recently collaborated with Dbrand on a series of skins and cases
This is definitely shitty.
Related: JerryRigEverything just came out with a video about this and titled "I got robbed" and called it theft a bunch of times. This is copyright infringement, maybe trademark infringement, but not "theft" or "robbery". No property or money was taken from any party such that they no longer have access to it. It's important to be accurate about this.
Edit:
Here is a list of all the media I've found surrounding this that falsely claims stealing, theft or robbery:
- Techlinked "dbrand was ROBBED" https://youtu.be/2yEE34BeBnA?si=i0oKsJRV8CQUs4P0
- JerryRigEverything "I'VE BEEN ROBBED" https://youtu.be/byfWscC87Vg?si=XJosK1Ubor5fWueW
- Engadget "Dbrand is suing Casetify for allegedly stealing its casd and skin designs" https://www.engadget.com/dbrand-is-suing-casetify-for-allegedly-stealing-its-case-and-skin-designs-221012321.html
- dbrand "Casetify stole our products. Now we’re suing them." https://twitter.com/dbrand/status/1727721586856222893
I havent watched it yet but now I will not watch it for the blatant baiting.
Thought it was about the bunker he was building...Copyright infringement is also known as intellectual property theft. I still disagree with his choice of video title.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Dbrand, the device skin company known for trolling brands like Sony and Nintendo, is waging a legal battle of its own.
The company is suing rival Casetify over claims it blatantly copied Dbrand’s Teardown device skins and cases, which are made to look like the internals of whatever phone, tablet, or laptop you’ve purchased them for.
In March, one user on X (formerly Twitter) pointed out that Casetify appeared to be reusing the image of the same internals across different phone models, which means they didn’t accurately represent the insides of each device they were sold for.
“If CASETiFY had simply created their own Teardown-esque design from scratch, we wouldn’t have anything to take issue with,” Dbrand CEO Adam Ijaz tells The Verge.
That’s why, instead of issuing a cease-and-desist order, Dbrand is hitting Casetify with a federal lawsuit in Canadian courts, where the company is based, and seeking eight figures in damages.
Dbrand is also launching a brand-new set of X-ray skins across its entire portfolio today that are rather different from the Teardown ones — they’re black and white, captured at 50 micron resolution by a lab called Haven Metrology, and show details that wouldn’t be visible simply by removing the back cover of a phone, laptop, or gaming handheld.
The original article contains 830 words, the summary contains 212 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
My favorite part of this was X “(formerly Twitter)” even when a bot is most efficiently paraphrasing it’s still necessary to waste two words to clarify that stupid apps name.
It also didn't actually mention why it was copyright infringement and included a whole paragraph on how they're not actually accurate to the internals
The bot's been like this for months, it's almost like it's throwing away the most relevant text and just keeping tangents and rephrasing of the headlines
Casetify has always felt shitty to me.They sell 45$+ cases with ugly customization and shitty print quality. Now this plagiarism too. Lol
I guess printing a correct headline of “sued for copyright infringement “ isn’t click baity enough. Because that’s all it is. Dbrand is lucky they haven’t been sued by the board manufacturers for creating an unlicensed derivative work (which is what the case art is, just as the photo of a sculpture, even stylized, has been deemed derivative - especially when the reproduction is intended to represent the original).
wtf stupid take is this? I bet you are so brilliant, so smart, that you have successfully managed to point out a hole that dbrand's lawyers have completely missed! I'm sure the investors totally had absolutely zero concerns about that and never mandated some form of investigation... I'm sure dbrand has taken no action at any point to verify that their business dealings do not go afowl of the law. Thank GOD for brilliant people like you, showing the companies the way.
If only these multinational brands had consulted this random guy about copyright law instead of trusting their lawyers. Idiots are muckin about blind.
Dbrand is lucky they haven’t been sued by the board manufacturers for creating an unlicensed derivative work (which is what the case art is, just as the photo of a sculpture, even stylized, has been deemed derivative - especially when the reproduction is intended to represent the original).
I think "lucky" is an overstatement but this is an interesting point and could be the knockoff company's defense ie:
we couldn't have infringed their IP because they don't own the IP
But I think this line of defense would open both case makers up to a suit from the phone manufacturers. Dbrand is well familiar with IP issues with hardware OEMs though so I don't know...