I think you're making an unwarranted assumption. My assumption about Sony's massive, multi-review process is far more likely to be upheld by fact.
I sincerely doubt your assumption will be upheld. I've worked at large multi-nationals, I currently run an agency which does design services for large multinational companies. Not once have I heard nor seen anyone do something like run an icon set for a support page through something like TinEye or Google Image Search to search for possible copyright infringement.
Legal resources at a company tend to be scarce and expensive, and this would be a waste and there's too much gray area in design copyright to make this sort of thing feasible. Also its easier to have your internal teams just do their job and design icons from scratch, outside contractors are going to be bound by contracts to ensure the work they provide is adequately licensed and to indemnify the company against any losses if its not.
Not to mention Sony will spend a small bit of money to deal with this slip up as opposed to a great amount of money trying to police every design they use.
But Sony has a big policy (https://internet.sony.tv/customer/template/IPNotice.vm) of respecting "Intellectual Property" of others! And of defending its own "IP" quite zealously (http://www.itproportal.com/2011/06/28/sony-says-attacked-bec...) How can you write that?!? Do you mean to say that Sony would consider violating some person's Property Rights just because it's cheaper or even free of charge to steal "Intellectual Property" than it is to figure out if some person owns the "IP" and who that person might be, and then negotiate a contract for the legal, proper use of the "IP"? Shocking! Just Shocking that some person would impugn Sony's good "Intellectual Property" name over an icon!
I sincerely doubt your assumption will be upheld. I've worked at large multi-nationals, I currently run an agency which does design services for large multinational companies. Not once have I heard nor seen anyone do something like run an icon set for a support page through something like TinEye or Google Image Search to search for possible copyright infringement.
Legal resources at a company tend to be scarce and expensive, and this would be a waste and there's too much gray area in design copyright to make this sort of thing feasible. Also its easier to have your internal teams just do their job and design icons from scratch, outside contractors are going to be bound by contracts to ensure the work they provide is adequately licensed and to indemnify the company against any losses if its not.
Not to mention Sony will spend a small bit of money to deal with this slip up as opposed to a great amount of money trying to police every design they use.