Sony sued over Blu-ray patents

Sony has been sued for patent infringement for its Blu-Ray technology once again, this time by California intellectual property company Orinda IP USA.

In May 2007, a company called Target Technology sued Sony, alleging that Blu-ray infringed on patents discussing the reflective materials used on optical discs. The suit from Orinda, filed on August 20, involves the method of reproducing data on "disk-shaped media," namely Blu-ray discs.

All products containing a Blu-ray drive allegedly infringe upon Orinda's patent. This includes the PlayStation 3, all Vaio computers with Blu-ray drives, and any essentially any Blu-ray player made by Sony or other OEMs.

In addition to an injunction on Blu-ray, Orinda is seeking royalties, treble damages, interest, and legal fees.

Like many other cases of this nature, it has been filed in the "Patent Troll Mecca" of East Texas, and will be presided over by the famous patent judge, T. John Ward.

An interesting side note to this case is that Orinda's patent was originally filed in 1993 by Hyundai Electronics Industries. Justice Ward's first patent law case was defending that company in Texas Instruments v. Hyundai Elec. Indus. Co., 49 F. Supp. 2d 893, when TI sued Hyundai for infringing on several patents for DRAM and other semiconductor devices. Texas Instruments won the suit, and signed a multi-million dollar cross-licensing agreement with Hyundai.

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