A US District judge has cleared Sony of any major wrongdoing in a class-action lawsuit filed over the publisher's response to the PSN outage and security breach in April 2011.

Those looking to legally punish Sony for the PSN outage have been left disappointed.

According to Courthouse News Service, Judge Anthony Battaglia filed a 36-page order dismissing a large proportion of the claims made against Sony in the class-action suit, including negligence, unjust enrichment, bailment, and violations of California consumer-protection statutes.

In addition, the judge found that Sony did not violate consumer-protection laws, because none of the named plaintiffs in the suit actually subscribed to premium PSN services, "and thus received the PSN services free of cost".

The suit was filed on behalf of PSN users who sought actual damages from Sony for its failure to protect the personal data of approximately 77 million PlayStation users during the April attack by hackers on the PlayStation Network, Qriocity, and Sony Online Entertainment.

The suit claimed that the security breach was caused by Sony's negligence in data security, including a failure to maintain a firewall and security systems, and a failure to properly encrypt data.

Sony later moved to dismiss the class action.

Battaglia said that users should have been well aware that Sony's security was not "perfect", finding that all users had signed a Sony Privacy Policy that included "clear admonitory language" detailing that Sony's security was the way it was, and thus "no reasonable consumer could have been deceived".

Battaglia also dismissed the bailment charge with prejudice, due to the fact that the plaintiffs admitted that their personal information was stolen as a result of a criminal data breach that had nothing to do with Sony.

The class-action suit has now been given leave to amend its claims.