Dbrand is Suing Casetify For Ripping Off Its Teardown Designs

New submitter Kiddo 9000 writes: Dbrand, a company known best for making cases for phones, game consoles, and laptops, has filed a lawsuit against case manufacturer CASETiFY over their "Inside Out" case lineup. Dbrand alleges that CASETiFY copied the designs from their Teardown skins and put them on their own products without permission. In a video published by JerryRigEverything, several easter eggs placed in the Teardown skins were found in the CASETiFY designs, alongside numerous tweaks and layout changes, and even Dbrand's logo.

They definitely stole the designs

[sirket]

Considering the evidence presented in the YouTube video by Zack this morning, it's obvious Casetify stole the designs from Dbrand. The only question is whether they will settle, or if not, what a judge/jury will say.

Re: They definitely stole the designs

[Speare]

They copied. They relied upon. They infringed. Taking them to court for an injunction or damages, etc., is an appropriate response.

But to steal is to deprive the owners of their original, and Dbrand still has all their design files and inventory intact. This was not a legal "taking" as the term "steal" refers; this was an infringement.

Re:

[nsbfikwjuunkifjqhm]

Thank you for your expert legal opinion, mister arm chair lawyer. But steal isn't legal term, not is it being used as one here, and dBrand haven't taken them to court for "stealing". It's a lay, colloquial term for any act in which something of value is obtained without permission. Intangible things can still have value. You can steal someone's intellectual property. You can steal someone's electricity. You can steal someone's heart. Phone scammers can steal grandma's pension money. You can steal someone's

Re: They definitely stole the designs

[MrNaz]

Best beat down of pointless pedantry ever.

Kudos, good sir.

Re:

[TwistedGreen]

It's called STEALING because the Americans need to know which of the 10 Commandments was violated.

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[sirket]

Glad to know Slashdot is still full of pedantic twats.

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[Fly Swatter]

Most likely nothing was actually stolen, the manufacturing plant ran additional runs and stamped someone else's name on it. Happens all the time. Also it is most likely the Casetify company was created by someone that works at or owns the manufacturing facility.

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[sirket]

You very obviously didn't watch the video. CASETiFY took the images and altered them- both by removing some of the easter eggs, and by changing the logos to their own. This was not done on a whim by the factory- it required time and effort to look at the images, and then intentionally remove things they thought were custom to the Dbrand design, all in an effort to hide the fact that they stole it.

Go watch the video yourself because this wasn't slapping their own label on someone else's design- they stole th

Link seems unrelated

[hdyoung]

Wut?

Re:Link seems unrelated

[AyesC]

That's odd, the YouTube link should have gone to this video [youtube.com].

Re:

[Entrope]

The editors here have one job. (And everyone knows the rest.)

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[Opportunist]

And whatever it may be, they're hopefully better at it.

Re: Link seems unrelated

[pretenda]

If only they could copy and paste as well as casetify

Not surprising

[RitchCraft]

Casetify is based in Hong Kong. There's a saying in China, "If you can cheat, then cheat." Looks like they took that saying completely at face value. I mean c'mon, they copied the Easter Eggs for Xi's sake.

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[AmiMoJo]

Every country has people doing this. For example, mapping companies put trap roads on their published maps, fake curves or entire fake roads, to catch people copying them.

Anyone who has ever sold software will tell you that there are a lot of people willing to rip them off. The US Army was doing it a few years ago.

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[necro81]

The US Army was doing it a few years ago.

The USArmy is selling tear down skins? That’s amazing! Although I would have expected to see a tear down skin of an M-16 first.

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[xanthos]

Somebody could probably do a whole youtube channel on the various easter eggs they have found in products. Not that it would be worth watching, but then again most of the personally published videos aren't worth watching either.

Aren't they suing the wrong party?

[Fly Swatter]

They should be suing their own outsourced manufacturing partner for making extra runs of the product and stamping someone else's name on it. If you design a product and have it manufactured in China this WILL happen. Every time.

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[virtig01]

If you watch the video, Jerry shows how the printed image is actually taken from the preview of the original website. Yup: right-click, save-as. Which is why the image quality is such crap on the knockoffs.

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[MikeDataLink]

They should be suing their own outsourced manufacturing

You should be reading the fucking article before commenting.

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[Fly Swatter]

Yea I didn't do that (RTFA) and expected they stole the design for the case and not just an image to print on a case. Oh well. Copyright infringement is bad and all that... On to the next news worthy article...