14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that there is never a dull moment in the IT industry, as there is also someone, somewhere with enough of a reason to give the Court some work to do. While Intel and NVIDIA keep fighting over chipsets and AMD accuses the latter of bribing game developers, there seem to be even more shadiness going on in other parts of the industry. Dell has accused a number of LCD panel makers of having allegedly participated in a carter that demanded that the plaintiff pay more than it should have for LCD panels.
This court action is similar to the one filed by AT&T back in October 2009, when the carrier sued its own solid amount of companies. Among the accused were LG Display, Sharp, AU Optronics, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, HannStar Display and Samsung, of which Sharp, LG and Chungwa Picture Tubes already pleaded guilty.
These three were forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and, now, they might be faced with a similar situation if Dell is proven right. The PC maker is filing for damages for the period during which it was forced to pay more for every LCD panel bought. The exact amount of damages, however, according to a Dell spokesperson, has not been decided upon yet, reports Reuters.
Of the accused, Sharp and Hitachi refused to comment, whereas Toshiba and Epson declared that they were still investigating the issue.
This LCD price fixing conspiracy investigation is not the only one that has arisen over the years. In fact, the investigation around the last such carter, which ran between September 14, 2001 and December 1, 2006, is still ongoing. Unfortunately, for Dell at least, it will likely take a while before the Court reaches an actual decision, which means the company will have some waiting to do before it receives its refund, if indeed it wins the case.