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Sony PlayStation 3 Imports Temporarily Banned In Europe

Posted by Roblimo on from the acrimonious-patent-battles dept.

tekgoblin writes "Looks like Sony is in some trouble in Europe. LG recently complained about Sony and filed a US patent dispute over their Blu-ray technology. Now they have been granted a preliminary injunction in the matter in Europe. This injunction prevents the PlayStation 3 from currently being imported to Europe. For at least the next 10 days, every PlayStation that is imported will be seized by government officials."

2 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Sometimes good things happen . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    . . . . fuck Sony

  2. This is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It shouldn't be possible to use patent courts to seize a legitimate manufactured product and destroy a business over a patent dispute. Assuming the patents don't cover a significant portion of the IP that is in the device (aka the patent isn't for a whole playstation, it's a patent for a tiny piece of the technology) then the court should be limited to ordering that Sony pay a reasonable royalty (if the patent is small percent, then say 1% of gross revenues) into an escrow account pending appeals over the dispute.

    Now, if Sony refuses to pay, then I suppose seizing product is the only choice. But, I'm in favor of compulsory licensing : if I patent an idea, I MUST sell you a license to the IP and the license fee cannot be more than a proportional percentage of the value of the product or proportional to my R&D costs, whichever is greater. Same with copyrights