Posted on Wednesday, October 30 2013 @ 16:24 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
The Inquirer
notes that HP filed a lawsuit against most optical disk makers, accusing them of price fixing between 2004 and 2010:
The companies named in the lawsuit include NEC, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Quanta Storage, TEAC, and Toshiba along with their corresponding optical drive divisions, which HP accused of taking actions to "fix, raise, stabilize and maintain prices".
Filed in Houston, the complaint accuses the firms of colluding to drive up the prices of optical disc drives between 2004 and 2010, a time when "almost all forms of home entertainment and data storage were on optical discs".
HP explained that these companies accounted for 90 percent of sales in the optical drive market, and said, "Additionally, defendants and their co-conspirators belong to or control patent pools that effectively deter entry into the [optical disc drive] market by imposing high licensing costs on required technology."
