It’s a common enough story: one electronics company takes another to court over a patent dispute.

In this case, the companies in question are LG and Sony, and as usual, the lawsuit filed by LG doesn’t have as much to do with LG thinking it’s in the right as it does with trying to test the validity of its patent portfolio.

Like I said, a common enough tale, but what’s interesting about this lawsuit is that LG is asking the International Trade Commission to block the sale of the PlayStation 3

Several Bravia televisions and a number of Blu-Ray players for violating four LG patents describing a “way of dealing with multiple data streams, such as different camera angles, as well as a system to reproduce data that’s stored on a read-only device.”

In short, LG is going after any Sony product that can play Blu-Rays, and wants their sales banned until a verdict is in. LG will never get the ITC to agree with that, but it occurred to us that maybe, just maybe, it would be a good thing for Sony if such a ban did happen.

Everyone knows that Sony’s got a mess on their hands after the release of the PS3 master key, which permanently allows any current PS3 to run unsigned code.

Although Sony’s released a couple of firmware patches to try to keep a lid on the PS3 jailbreaking scene, everyone knows that existing PS3 hardware has been permanently compromised.

Maybe, just maybe, then, Sony would actually benefit in the long run if there were a temporary ban on PS3 sales.

That would allow them to change the hardware in their existing stock and all future models just enough to obviate the jailbreak exploit.

Instead of admitting that hackers caused them to halt PS3 shipments and redesign the system, they could then blame a competitor’s litigiousness on the brief period where PS3s were off store shelves.

The PS3 will never be banned by the ITC over a patent dispute, but there’s worse things that could happen to the thoroughly hacked console at this point.