Dbrand's Casetify Design Thievery Lawsuit

Submission 1,627

Overview

Dbrand's Casetify Design Thievery Lawsuit refers to litigation sent forth by device customization company Dbrand against phone case company Casetify, claiming the company stole their designs. The company provided convincing evidence that suggested Casetify was indeed knicking elements from their design, as well as the designs of YouTuber JerryRigEverything, leading to backlash against Casetify online.

Background

On November 23rd, 2023, Dbrand^[1] announced it was launching a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Casetify, one of the biggest phone case companies in the world, for stealing their design, specifically the Teardown design they made in collaboration with YouTuber JerryRigEverything.

The "Teardown" series is a unique phone case that looks like a phone's internal hardware, and Casetify made a similar design. Dbrand identified several inside jokes and personal references to their brand on their design that had suspiciously made it onto the Casetify design. These include the phrase "Glass is glass and glass breaks," which was coined by JerryRigEverything, the string "R0807," a reference to Dbrand's Twitter handle, and an "all-seeing eye" image they've used in promotional material before (examples shown below).

dbrand @dbrand Exhibit A: The phrase "GLASS IS GLASS AND GLASS BREAKS". dbrand This is a catch-phrase coined by Teardown co-creator @ZacksJerryRig. This tagline does not exist on the internal hardware of any smartphone, yet somehow appears on @Casetify's products. (2/6) GLASS IS GLASS AND GLASS BREAKS Fortager 100 TONA pacity/额定容量 apacity: 5000 mAh, 53 11:11 AM Nov 23, 2023 CASETIFY : CLASS IS CLASS AND GLASS BREAKS ...

dbrand @dbrand Exhibit D: The "All-Seeing Eye". This is a symbol we often use, as evidenced by both the favicon of our website and the dbrand Pyramid PC built by @LinusTech. This symbol is not present on the battery of any smartphone, yet somehow appears on @Casetify's products. (5/6) 1 Ampe US dbrand 95 11:11 AM. Nov 23, 2023 ジャ A CASETIFY ... us XX

JerryRigEverything posted a video about the design similarities the same day, also announcing the lawsuit, gaining over 5.2 million views in four days (shown below).

Developments

On November 24th, 2023, Casetify^[2] announced it was "investigating" copyright infringement allegations against them and was removing their offending product from their online store, gaining over 1,000 retweets, 2,000 likes, and 2,300 replies in three days (shown below).

CASETIFY CASETIFY @Casetify CASETIFY has always been a bastion of originality, and we hold pride in that. We are currently investigating a copyright allegation against us. We have immediately removed the designs in question from all platforms. We are also investigating a DDOS attack that disrupted our website when the allegation surfaced. All systems are back to normal now. All customer information is safe. Thanks for your patience and support during this challenging time. ⠀

Online Reaction

The situation led to widespread criticism of Casetify, as many felt the evidence against them was damning. On November 24th, Cr1TiKaL posted a video about the controversy, gaining over 1.3 million views in three days (shown below, left). The following day, TechLinked covered the controversy, gaining over 400,000 views in two days (shown below, right).

On November 24th, Twitter user @CameronRitz posted a SpongeBob clip to mock Casetify, gaining over 300 retweets and 5,600 likes in three days (shown below).