Game Over?

"When there is a choice of either living or dying, as long as there remains nothing behind to blemish one's reputation, it is better to live."
Shida Kichinosuke


ElectricBirdLand Limited closed its doors today.

ElectricBirdLand Limited, of which I was a Director, had been the target of legal action by the english arm of Sony Computer Entertainment. Sony alleged that ElectricBirdLand Limited had been infringing Sony's trade marks by parallel importing and offering for sale the products within the EEA (European Economic Area) without it's concent and demanded it sign a contract agreeing to provide Sony with all remaining stock, profits, customer data, supplier data, legal costs and damages amongst other things.

Though Sony sued ElectricBirdLand Limited, EBL had offered to stop selling PSPs on May 19th whilst the matter was investigated, Sony rejected the offer and on June 15h sued for £50,000 within 2 days of an article that ran on gamesindustry.biz that reported I was to hold a 'secret' meeting with independant retailers on the situation. Soon after the article a Private Invesigator was parked outside my home!

Sony are still yet to address the fact that ElectricBirdLand Limited received orders from divisions within the Sony Group of companies, SCEE employees and SCEE liscenees prior to, simultaneous with and subsequent to the the commencing of the legal action.

ElectricBirdLand Limited even delivered 6 PSP consoles to Sonystrasse in Austria on the day I faced 6 legal bruisers from Sony whilst representing ElectricBirdLand Limited at the High Court in London.

Of course it is the right of big companies to police their intellectual property rights, but in a global market that is a formidable and unenviable task. To run a multimillion pound campaign can to call it 'small beer' as a debt collection project is lunacy of the highest order. Importers and independent retailers are businessmen, not pirates, thieves, or criminals. Businessmen can be reasoned with in a sensible businesslike manner, there is no need for threatening and oppressive behaviour. Apply a little bit of the intellect next time.

Rome absorbed it's rivals, it didn't conquer them.

The only people that can benefit from any such action are the lawyers, the people that suffer the most are the customers. The considerable amount of money wasted by all parties could have been better spent on good causes.

Anti-competitive Market Segmentation and Price Discrimination will not be around forever.

ElectricBirdLand Limited had no interest in a Pyrrhic victory and ceased trading, on it's own terms

Sony have much more important battles to fight, hopefully verson 2.0 of the firmware will stop software piracy on the PSP. Considering software sales account for a large portion of Sony's profits and that of the Games Industry I sincerely hope that this stitches shut the hole that has been nibbled in its pockets by the pirates.

Releasing a cracked system on to the market in Europe would have been negligent but rushing a beta product on to the world market will inevitably cause damage to the Games Industry that could be significant but unquantifiable.

Am I bitter? No way. I don't drink beer either. I am not in business to litigate; I am in business to do business. I've made some really good friends - you can't put a price on that and none of them are on my payroll.

I'll call this episode adversial invoicing.

Sayōnara Sony.