Sony takes PSP importers to court

There's a lot of negative comments here. (In fact they're all negative). Unfortunately as PAL gamers we have to face a harsh reality.

You have to consider it from the point of view of SCEE. It's not as if SCEE wanted to launch the PSP months after the rest of the world. The undoubtedly the late release is due to a lack of stock necessarily to launch earlier. SCEE themselves have rely on Sony to deliver the stock so they have essentially no choice in the matter.

SCEE's problem:
As Andronicus says importing takes away profits from the Australian and European divisions of Sony. However possibly more importantly when the PSP does launch they still want it to be a cool "new" device that everyone wants to get at launch before their friends. If every man and his handheld-playing dog have imported one, that it's going to be a case of "oh so you finally got one too", come September 1st.

SCEE's solution:
As far as I know legally there's nothing wrong with importing and selling good per se as long as you pay all the correct tariffs. Thus SCEE has taken the only option open to them which perched on the idea that the importers have been using the Sony's trademarks when selling their products. Since they never gave permission for this, they're in breach of copyright law. I don't see that this is going to cause any companies any huge fines if it goes to court considering the nature of the use of the trade marks. I think under Australian law it would likely fall under "Fair Use" and hence not illegal - although it's shaky ground. In any case this is clearly mostly designed to act as a deterrent. Certainly nothing implicates that the consumers who have bought an imported PSP are at fault or likely to have legal action taken against them.

Conclusion:
SCEE have been put in a hard place. They've got stakeholders on all sides pulling them in different directions. They had two choices 1) Do nothing 2) Setup a legal team to deter importers from impinging on their market. I don’t see their action as particularly harsh, I see it as a fact of life. Either companies wait until they have enough stock to launch simultaneously worldwide or they launch what they can where they can. As a gamer I know which I prefer. I don’t want PSPs sitting in a warehouse when people could be playing them. This premise extends to the Xbox360 launch too.

Having said that it would be nice if Australia or Europe got the first launch for once