File this under ‘likely to fail’: Sony is being targeted in a lawsuit by California-based Orinda Intellectual Properties USA, who are claiming that the Japanese company has infringed one of their patents.

Why’s it likely to fail? Hit the jump for my reasoning.

According to Orinda, Sony (and the subsidaries Sony Electronics, Sony Computer Entertainment and SCEA, who are also being listed as offenders) infringed on patent no. 5,438,560 by producing Blu-ray drives without their prior permission.”Orinda has been and will continue to be damaged as a result of [Sony's] infringing conduct,” read the filing, although it’s not really clear how.

As a result of this alleged infringement, Orinda are demanding that Sony stop manufacturing, distributing and selling all forms of Blu-ray drive whether it is in the form of optical drives, Blu-ray players or (gulp) PlayStation 3 consoles. They’re also demanding a “reasonably royalty” should they win the case.

Now herein lies the thing: the patent that Orinda claims has been infringed upon is a bit of an ambigious one. According to the US Patent Office patent no. 5,438,560 is a patent for “apparatus and method for recording/reproducing optical information and optical disk-shaped recording medium”. A delve into the description of this patent reveals that it covers a “disk-shaped recording medium comprising a plurality of tracks…and an apparatus and a method for recording/reproducing optical information.” This essentially means that it covers multi-layer optical discs and so Orinda should just go out and sue everybody.

I’m not delving into the technicalities and the like because I’m not exactly a legal professional (think Jack Thompson levels of suitability) but the patent simply appears to be far too open-ended to concentrate solely on a single medium such as Blu-ray. If Orinda are going to sue Sony because they’re using an “optical disc-shaped recording medium”, just like every manufacturer of CDs and DVDs in the world, then they might as well sue everyone else.

Good luck with this, Orinda. I’m not sure you’ll win (since Sony have been sued over Blu-ray before and, um, won) but even if you lose, you can always sue someone else who is producing an optical disc-shaped recording medium. And lose there too, probably.

PS3 Targeted in Blu-ray Suit - EDGE

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