AT&T Inc won partial reinstatement of its price-fixing lawsuit against AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), Samsung Electronics Co, LG Display Co and other makers of LCD panels.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in San Francisco said on Thursday that AT&T, the biggest US phone carrier, could sue the Asian companies under California’s antitrust and unfair competition law over panel purchases that occurred outside the state.
The alleged price-fixing conspiracy may be sufficiently connected to California to allow the case to proceed, the court ruled.
“A defendant cannot reasonably complain that the application of California law is arbitrary or unfair when its alleged conspiracy took place, at least in part, in California,” the court said.
The case is one of several civil antitrust actions filed against makers of the LCD panels used in computers, notebook computers and televisions following a US federal probe.
A US Department of Justice criminal investigation of LCD price fixing led to guilty pleas by LG Display Co, Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子) and Sharp Corp, which agreed to pay more than US$890 million in fines.
Seventeen executives have been charged and 10 have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison, the US Department of Justice said last year.
The appeals court sent the case back to a federal judge in San Francisco to determine whether each defendant’s alleged conduct was tied tightly enough to California to allow Dallas-based AT&T to press its claims under state antitrust law.
Eric Miller, a spokesman for the law firm of the LCD makers’ attorney, Richard Taffet, declined to comment on the ruling. Andrew Morgan, an AT&T spokesman did not immediately respond to e-mail messages seeking comment.
AT&T alleged in the Oct. 20, 2009, lawsuit reinstated on Thursday that it paid inflated prices for billions of US dollars of LCD panels purchased from 1996 to 2006 because the manufacturers orchestrated a global conspiracy to fix prices.
The company asked for triple damages and an injunction barring the manufacturers from colluding in the future.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained