Lik-Sang

» see lik-sang.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

lik-sang was for the import-console crowd, and that was not me. i was a pc gamer through the 1998-2006 stretch, internet-cafe counter-strike and a half-broken family pc at home. region locks on consoles were a category of problem i never had to solve. the lik-sang customer was usually a uk or european importer trying to get a japanese game cube release months before europe got it, or a us collector chasing a region-locked dreamcast title.

the company itself was founded in 1998 in hong kong. it sold imported games for every console platform across all three regions, plus accessory hardware, region-free mod chips, action replays, controllers in colors europe never got, and the kind of obscure adapters you needed to make a japanese saturn run on a european tv. for the importing community in the late nineties and early 2000s it was the address.

in august 2005 sony computer entertainment europe filed legal action over psp imports. lik-sang had been shipping japanese-region psps to uk customers before sony europe's own psp launch in early '05, taking advantage of the european-launch-delay window that sony had created. lik-sang argued under hong kong trademark law that once an item entered any global market legitimately, international exhaustion principles allowed onward export. sony europe sued in london and won.

this part you had to be in the eu console scene for, and i was not. on 24 october 2006 lik-sang posted a notice that it was closing as a result of multiple sony lawsuits. the public letter named sony europe executives who, according to lik-sang's records, had themselves purchased psp imports from lik-sang as early as 14 december 2004, two days after the japanese launch. nobody at sony europe was asked to explain that. the high court of london ruling stood. lik-sang was wound up within weeks.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ what they sold ~

lik-sang's catalog from the wayback machine in 2003-2005 reads like a back-issue of edge magazine in inventory form. you could buy a japanese pal-modded saturn with a region adapter or a japanese gameboy advance sp in colors europe would not see for another year. modchips for the original xbox and the playstation 2 were openly listed. action replays and gameshark devices for every console platform back to the snes were stocked.

the customer was, in the main, a european collector who had been priced out of import shipping from japan-only retailers, or a uk gamer who had calculated that buying a us nintendo product plus a step-down voltage converter was cheaper than waiting six months for the european release. lik-sang made the economics work by aggregating those orders out of a single hong kong warehouse with bulk-rate dhl arrangements to the eu.

~ the psp suit ~

sony's psp launched in japan in december 2004. the us release followed in march 2005 and the european one in september. lik-sang was shipping japanese-region psps to uk customers from day one of the japanese launch, which meant a uk buyer could have a psp nine months before the official local release. sony europe's complaint was specifically that lik-sang's marketing implied the imported units were licensed for the european market when they were not, and that sony's european trademark rights were being infringed by the parallel-import channel.

lik-sang's defense rested on hong kong trademark law, which uses international exhaustion of rights. once an item is legitimately on sale in any market, the trademark cannot be used to block onward trade. the london high court applied english law, which uses regional rather than international exhaustion in the eu. lik-sang lost. the appeal route was not financially viable for a small import retailer.

~ what got buried with it ~

lik-sang's closure left the early-2000s import scene without its central node. play-asia.com (still in business in '26) absorbed much of the catalog. smaller import shops like ncsx.com picked up the rest. the trade itself continued, just spread across smaller operators with different exposure to european legal action. the lasting cultural mark was the october '06 closure letter naming sony europe staff as lik-sang customers, which became a touchstone for the "grey market is fine for executives, illegal for retail" complaint that runs through the import scene to this day.

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