Judge Finds L-3 Patent "Obvious"

Reuters: A federal judge has ruled in favor of Sony, overturning a jury verdict for L-3 Communications and invalidating several parts of an image sensor patent held by the defense contractor. The judge said that the jury in 2013 was wrong to find L-3's patent claims were not "obvious" and thus insufficiently unique to be patented. New York-based L-3 sued Sony in 2010 over two patents for the image sensors, which it said were originally developed for military low-light applications.

Law360: The patent in the lawsuit is:

US5541654 "Focal plane array imaging device with random access architecture" by Peter C. T. Roberts

This is a divisional patent. The original patent under the same name has been dropped earlier in the dispute:

US5452004 "Focal plane array imaging device with random access architecture" by Peter C. T. Roberts

Update: The official judge opinion on the case is published here.