Sony Corporation

November 10, 2011
Intellectual Property News and Interesting Facts

Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka are the founders of Sony. They derived the name from sonus (latin for Sound).

Sony Corporation is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony headquarters is situated in Tokyo, Japan.

The Sony Group is focused on the Electronics, Games, Entertainment, and Financial Services sectors. The group consists of Sony Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Financial Holdings.

In 2010 Sony, Panasonic and Motorola was ranked 6th in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics.

Trade marks

Former slogans: “It’s a Sony” “like.no.other”
Current slogan: “make.believe”

Patents

Sony created the Umatic, Betamax, Betacam, Compact Disc, 3.5 inch Floppy Disk, Video8, DAT, Hi8, MiniDisc, Digital Betacam, miniDV, DVD with others, DVCAM, Memory Stick, Digital8, Universal Media Disc, HDV with JVC, Blu-ray Disc with Panasonic and many more.

Sony has also developed a music playing robot called Rolly, dog-shaped robots called AIBO, humanoids, and QRIO.

In late 1994 Sony launched the PlayStation.

Lawsuits

In 2003 Sony Computer Entertainment America was sued by Immersion Corporation which claimed that the PlayStation Dual Shock controllers infringed on Immersion’s patents. A federal jury agreed and awarded the company US$ 82 million in damages.

Microsoft Corp. was also sued for the Xbox controller, however, they settled out of court.

Hacking

In January 2011 Sony Computer Entertainment filed suit against George Hotz.

George Hotz published a technique for hacking the PlayStation 3 allowing it to run alternative operating systems like Linux.

The case attracted much negative publicity among hackers and in April 2011 they declared in an open letter that they were directing their hostile attention against Sony.

Sony Computer Entertainment was subjected to service attacks, apparently in retaliation for its case against Hotz.

Sony announced that the PlayStation Network (PSN) had been attacked, resulting in the theft of the personal information of 77 million account holders.

Sony decided to shut down the PlayStation Network following the attack. PSN returned to service following a 26 day outage.

In May 2011 Sony announced that its Ericsson website and the Sony Music Entertainment website had been compromised. On 29 May 2011 Lulz Security announced a campaign against Sony, using language emblematic of the Anonymous movement.

In June 2011 Sony Pictures Entertainment was subject to an attack, disclosing 1 million user passwords, which were then distributed via BitTorrent.