14 DAY TRIAL // South Korea Electronic giant LG has filled a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission against Japanese company Sony over a dispute about patents which could result in a ban on the import of the PlayStation 3 home-gaming console into the United States.
LG says that Sony has infringed on its patents, some linked with the PS3 and some that are used in the creation of the Bravia product line.
Apparently, the patents for the PlayStation 3 that are under dispute have something to do with how the Blu-ray drive works when using multiple data streams and with how data reproduction is done when read only devices are in use.
When it comes to high definition television sets LG says that Sony infringed on patents linked to how the signal is received and processed.
LG has also sued Sony in a civil court in California, aiming to get financial compensation for the unauthorized use of patents.
Late in 2010 Sony also moved against LG, saying that the company broke patents linked to the mobile phones that LG created and to its Blu-ray players.
It seems unlikely that the International Trade Commission would rule that Sony should not import the PlayStation 3 to the United States and the two competing legal actions between LG and Sony will probably be settled out of court.
Sony has recently announced that its internal division, which is in charge of video game and the PlayStation brand, has seen a substantial profit which contributed significantly to the bottom line of the company, coming from posting a loss as soon as two years ago.
The company recently launched the Move motion tracking system for the home console and is integrating it with video games like Killzone 3 and SOCOM 4, aiming to show how it can improve titles that are traditionally linked to the hardcore crowd.