via dbrand’s Twitter
This morning, I saw a video on my YouTube feed from JerryRigEverything (Zack). He had been robbed! I was concerned because he’s always seemed like a good guy. I mean, no one deserves to be robbed, but nice people certainly deserve it even less.
I like giving philosophy majors something to analyze first thing on my posts.
Fortunately, Zack from JerryRigEverything was not the victim of a burglary. However, according to a lawsuit from dbrand, Casetify did steal from them.
Both dbrand and Casetify are device protection manufacturers. dbrand makes cases, skins, PS5 external plates, and snarky social media posts. Casetify is one of the largest manufacturers of electronics cases on the planet, with custom designs made by artists and Casetify… usually. Because, according to dbrand’s lawsuit, Casetify took the work they did with JerryRigEverything to make teardown skins and cases, and just slapped it—barely modified—onto their own cases.
Are you thinking, “That’s ridiculous, who would be that stupid?” Indeed, I had as well. But dbrand and JerryRigEverything provided evidence in a video and multiple images showing what certainly appears to be some terrible copies of dbrand and Zack’s work.
Proving IP Theft Isn’t Just for Robots
dbrand often refers to themselves as “robots.” They even added “R0807” onto their skins, a little serial number humor that spells out “Robot.” They add lots of little Easter eggs like that into their skins, like JerryRigEverything’s catchphrase, “Glass is glass and glass breaks.” You can find the catchphrase on both dbrand’s designs made in partnership with Zack and, for some reason, Casetify’s case. Only, Casetify didn’t have a partnership with JerryRigEverything or dbrand to make those cases. So why would their “Inside Out” cases feature the same teardown Easter eggs dbrand and Zack added to their designs?
Yes, it turns out that humans can steal too, and that’s what dbrand is accusing the humans over at Casetify of doing. Take that, AI, you learned it from watching us after all!
If you couldn’t tell, I find this all hilarious. Casetify is a nearly billion dollar company. They—allegedly—decided to steal from a snarky brand like dbrand and a creator like JerryRigEverything? Ridiculous! They could have easily made their own tear down skins! Sure, it takes tens of thousands hour hours to make accurate representations of all of those devices, but for a (nearly) billion dollar company, that’s just a small expenditure. After all, Casetify has some of the most expensive (and in my professional opinion as a case tester, overpriced) cases on the market. They could have easily covered their costs!
Casetify took down their website today, and when it went back up, they weren’t selling their “Inside Out” cases anymore. Although, parts of their website still suggest it as a search phrase. Casetify did sell and ship out cases with what dbrand allege are their designs on them. In fact, they bought a bunch to test their theory, finding many of their exclusive Easter eggs on the Casetify cases.
Obviously, everyone’s innocent until proven guilty in the United States (in principle, not often in practice), so I can’t say definitively that Casetify stole anything. However, from where I’m sitting, the evidence looks pretty damning. It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.
Update/Correction: The original version of this article listed Casetify’s allegedly offending line as “Inside Parts.” This was, however, a previous lineup that just showed the same iPhone internals for every case. “Inside Out” is the name of the new lineup that allegedly stole dbrand’s designs.
Also, dbrand generally doesn’t capitalize their name. So I fixed that too.
Sources:
- Kris Holt, Engadget
- Emma Roth, The Verge
- Zack, JerryRigEverything