Sony drives Lik Sang out of business
I’ve been following the legal battles between Sony and Hong Kong gaming importer Lik Sang because it was only a few weeks ago that the latter company shipped the Gamepark Holdings GP2x to my door.
Last week, the High Court of London ruled that selling PSPs from Asia to the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA), which Lik Sang had been doing for over a year, was unlawful due to trademark, copyright, and other infringements. Since this wasn’t entirely new territory for Lik Sang to tread on (it had shut down, cleaned up, and reopened once before), I expected the site to be offline for a few days while it simply removed or revamped its PSP offerings.
Imagine my surprise today when Lik Sang issued a press release indicating that it would be going out of business indefinitely. Why? Because its pockets are nowhere as deep as Sony’s. Rather than file a single lawsuit, Sony filed the same lawsuit in every single country in the European Union, essentially beating Lik Sang to death with fees it simply couldn’t afford. More disgraceful than the battle of bank accounts, however, are the facts that Lik Sang was not present at the court hearing and that high-ranking Sony Europe executives purchased PSPs from Lik Sang when European sales of the console were down.
What happens next is anyone’s guess but in the meantime, Lik Sang is not accepting new orders and is in the process of cancelling or refunding pre-existing ones.
