Sony faces "misrepresentation" accusations in hack case

George GeoHot Hotz's lawyers have accused Sony of deliberately misleading courts as to which of its national divisions owns the PlayStation 3 software development kit, in order to gain otherwise illegal access to the hacker's hard drives.

According to Groklaw, GeoHot has argued that the SDK is owned by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, and not Sony Computer Entertainment America.

SCEA had previously argued that Hotz's use of the SDK created a "relationship" between the two parties, and this allowed a Californian court to permit a search of Hotz's home and hard drives.

Hotz's legal team has described SCEA's failure to acknowledged other SCE division's rights to the SDK as "material misrepresentations", and filed for a protective order to keep his drives intact.

Hotz has claimed the drives must not be searched, because they contain commercial material which could prove financially disastrous.

As well as access to GeoHot's drives, Sony has been granted the details of his PayPal account and the IP addresses of visitors to his website.

Hotz is being sued by Sony after publishing PS3's root key in January, a move which helped open the machine up to piracy.

Thanks, CVG.