Sony hit with $18.5 million patent fine

An East Texas federal jury has ruled that Sony must cough up $18.5 million in damages to a company called Agere Systems for a patent violation on a “wireless local area network apparatus” included in the PSP and other handheld devices such as the mylo Personal Communicator and Network Walkman audio players.

When the suit was originally filed in March of 2006, alleging Sony knowingly and willfully infringed on this and seven other patents, with the slate of complaints being cut down over the intervening years. Also since the filing of the suit, Agere Systems has ceased to exist, having merged with silicon and software tech firm LSI Corporation in 2007.

Sony was also recently hit with a patent claim for the PS3 Blu-ray capability, but won a dismissal in a related suit and settled with Immersion over controller vibration in 2007 for the DualShock 3.