Lik-Sang Forced Out Of Business By Sony

Online retailer Lik-Sang.com is closing its doors after losing several cases against Sony, who argued that by selling Japanese PSPs to Europe, Lik-sang infringed copyright and trademark laws. Lik-Sang posted this statement on their website:

“Sony have failed to disclose to the London High Court that not only the world wide gaming community in more than 100 countries relied on Lik-Sang for their gaming needs, but also Sony Europe’s very own top directors repeatedly got their Sony PSP hard or software imports [...] starting just two days after Japan’s official release, as early as 14th of December 2004 (more than nine months earlier than the legal action)”.

Lik-Sang claims Sony’s own European employees and directors used Lik-sang to purchase PSP units from Japan, when it wasn’t available in the European countries. Sony tried to explain that the Japanese PSPs don’t meet the high safety demands of the EU, to which Lik-Sang replied:

“PSP consoles shipped from Lik-Sang contained genuine Sony 100V-240V AC Adapters that carry CE and other safety marks and are compatible world wide. All PSP consoles were in conformity with all EU and UK consumer safety regulations”.

Lik-sang manager Pascal Clarysse closed with these words:

“The Empire finally ‘won’, few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today… It’s the beginning of the end of the world as we know it.”

I think he’s right, Lik-Sang was the one of the few places where you could safely import games and consoles from Japan, although I highly doubt it’s “the beginning of the end of the world as we know it”, I’m sure eager gamers will find other ways of importing from Japan.

Read (Eurogamer)
Official satement on Lik-Sang.com