The RetroPod is dead
You can't really expect a couple of hipsters to be all up on trademark law and such, and so now just a few months after it made its perfectly-timed debut, the RetroPod is dead. You'd think you could take an old Sony Walkman case and do whatever you wanted with it as long as it was bought and paid for, but apparently Sony's lawyers didn't look too kindly upon anyone using a vintage Eighties Walkman as an iPod case and consqeuently sent off a cease & desist letter a few weeks ago. Best part:
Consumers likely will be misled and deceived into believing that Sony is somehow connected with the iPod personal stereo when in fact it is not. Moreover, they will be misled into thinking that Sony is backward in its design of products and is going away from miniaturization, as the size of the tape player housing is quite large by today's standards.
Damn, Sony, you wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that you're backwards or anything, huh? Anyway, we're pretty sure that these guys have a legal leg to stand on since they weren't selling it as the RetroPod Walkman or whatever (we'll have to consult some lawyer types to make sure), but either way it sounds like they just didn't feel like tangling with a multinational corporation.
