Memory Price Fixing Cartel Lawsuit Settles for $173

The ongoing month, if one were to count out Computex, may have come out as either somewhat dull or packed, mostly because IT news has consisted of nothing much besides consecutive product launches and related rumors. Unfortunately, the development that has now come to freshen up the industry, in a manner of speaking, is not particularly grand, though still favorable from a certain point of view. In short, a number of top-level memory makers have agreed to pay fines in order to settle a lawsuit they have been embroiled in since 2006.

The six companies that have agreed upon this move go by the names of Elpida, Micron, Mosel, Infineon, Hynix, Vitelic and NEC. One may recognize them as some of the top supplier of memory worldwide. They, along with Samsung (who settled in 2007), were accused, four years ago, of having participated in a cartel that that artificially drove DRAM prices upward during the 1998-2002 period. This, naturally, was damaging not just to PC companies and state agencies, but to consumers themselves.

The measures agreed upon by them and the group of US state attorneys general were twofold. For one, they will, naturally, refrain from further illegal price-fixing and will conduct employee training. The other side of the agreement implies that all six will have to pay a total of $173 million in fines to 33 US states and private plaintiffs. This decision is not much different from how the European Commission fined nine memory makers for the same thing last month.

“This settlement will make up for some of the harm caused by memory chip manufacturers who conspired to drive up computer costs,” said Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, according to the official press release. “The agreement will also prohibit the companies from manipulating prices in the future.”