The general rule that applies in most western countries is that since legal ownership of the goods never left Empeg Ltd (or whoever owns them now e.g. SonicBlue), that the "owner" is still in fact Empeg Ltd.

Its a common prinicple in common law that you cannot obtain better entitlement to (stolen) goods than the person you bought them from [unless of course you happen to be a goverment, in which case you can do what you like - including passing laws to make certain kinds of theft "legal", but thats a different thread].

The nett effect is that, legitmately buying stolen goods gives you no more rights to the goods than the person you bought them from, even if they to acquired the goods legitimately themselves etc down the chain back to the guys who obtained the goods illegally i nthe first place.

Its true of cars as well - there are occasional situations where people sell cars without obtaining clear title (either since the cars are stolen, or because they never paid the finance company all their money so they never released ownership of the car), then many owners later, the repo guys (or the law) turn up to get the car back. And can do so legally as the (legal) ownership of the car never actually changed hands, so all the repo guys/the law are doing is recovering "stolen" property.

In such a situation you are not only out of pocket for your "repossessed" car, and you may get charged with "receiving" stolen goods.

Of course, if its a cross-border situation (as undoubtedly these stolen Empegs are) then its very difficult to enforce.

Of course, any recovered stolen Empegs now are worth less than half it was at the time it was acquired illegally- and not just due to depreciation either.