PS5 Console Plate Makers Provoke Sony, Then Hit Legal Trouble

You might not remember since February 2021 was actually 19 years ago, but earlier this year phone and console skin makers Dbrand released a set of black PS5 faceplates. Not content with merely releasing them, though, the company also bizarrely baited Sony to sue them, and Sony is now obliging.

As The Verge report, Dbrand’s “Darkplates” have recently been removed from the company’s store, and any purchasing links now redirect to a page that only lists all the news articles written about the plates, including the Gizmodo story linked above

Why pull them now? Because the company received a cease & desist letter from Sony, part of which says:

It has come to SIE’s attention that dbrand has been promoting and selling console accessories in a manner that is deeply concerning to our client. First, dbrand is selling faceplates for the PSS console (in both standard edition and digital edition configurations) that replicate SIE’s protected product design. Any faceplates that take the form of our client’s PSS product configuration, or any similar configuration, and are: produced and sold without permission from SIE violate our client’s intellectual property rights in the distinctive console design.

Second, dbrand is selling skins for SIE devices that feature the PlayStation Family Mark Your company may not sell products that bear unauthorized depictions of our client’s PlayStation Marks. The below still from one of dbrand’s instructional videos shows a dbrand skin bearing a design identical to the PlayStation Family Mark.

For their part, Dbrand have responded with a rambling corporate shitpost on Reddit, which opens with “much like your hopes and dreams, Darkplates are dead” before eventually settling into actual legal defences of their position, saying the plates don’t violate any existing trademarks. Dbrand suspects that Sony’s actual motivation here is moving to shut down competitors before revealing its own, first-party replacement panels for the PS5.

Note that this isn’t the first company Sony has gone after like this. CustomizeMyPlates were also forced to halt sales of their own coloured replacement plates in 2020, though in their case they resumed sales earlier this year and have been undisturbed since, perhaps because their versions don’t include tiny logos that look a lot like actual PlayStation icons.