Dbrand is suing Casetify for ripping off its Teardown designs - The Verge - eviltoast
  • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    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…