Taiwanese flat-panel TV maker Amtran Technology Co Ltd (瑞軒) said yesterday its affiliate, Vizio Inc, had filed an anti-trust and unfair competition lawsuit against its Japanese rival, Funai Electronics Co, in the US.
The latest legal action by Vizio followed a ruling by the US International Trade Commission’s that invalidated a related patent that Funai had attempted to enforce against Vizio and to review a judge’s prior decision that Vizio had infringed on part of US Patent No. 6,115,074.
Irvine, California-based Vizio alleged that Funai, “acting alone and in concert with others, unlawfully restrained trade and monopolized the market for the licensing of technology used to interpret and retrieve information from a digital television broadcast signal, as well as the market for digital television sets and receivers,” Amtran said, citing Vizio.
Amtran has a 23 percent stake in Vizio and makes flat-screen TVs for the US’s third-largest liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panel TV maker.
“The company will safeguard the company’s legal rights and seek any possible means to protect the company’s interest,” Amtran said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Vizio expanded its share of the US LCD market by volume to 12.8 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, up from the third quarter’s 8.4 percent, behind Sony Corp and top-brand Samsung Electronics Co, market researcher DisplaySearch’s latest tallies showed.
Vizio filed the antitrust and unfair competition lawsuit in the US District Court, Central District of California, against Funai and related components, a company statement released earlier this month on its Web site said.
“VIZIO, as America’s HDTV Company, has been instrumental in making high quality flat panel TVs more affordable for Americans. Especially in light of the nation’s digital TV transition, we won’t allow a foreign competitor to divert us from our mission to bring affordable high quality HDTVs to millions of Americans,” Vizio co-founder Laynie Newsome said in a statement.
Amtran jumped 3.2 percent to NT$11.25 yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX’s 0.9 percent rise.
This week’s undoing of the TerraUSD algorithmic stablecoin and its sister token, Luna, has ramifications for all of crypto. First, there is the immediate impact: The rapid collapse of a once-popular pair of cryptocurrencies sent a ripple effect across the industry, contributing to plummeting coin prices that wiped hundreds of billions of market value from the digital-asset market and stoked worries over the potential fragility of digital-asset ventures. Then there are the knock-on effects. In addition to delivering punishing losses to individual users and investment firms, the spectacular failure of a market darling like Terra threatens to have a cooling effect
China’s biggest chipmaker has cut its outlook for the second quarter, joining a growing list of manufacturers warning about the fallout from lockdowns aimed at containing the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co (SMIC, 中芯) estimates a month-long lockdown in Shanghai could spur component shortages and logistics tangles, and erase about 5 percent of its output in the second quarter. “We are trying our best to mitigate the impact on product delivery,” SMIC Chairman Gao Yonggang (高永崗) told analysts on a call yesterday morning. “We are still assessing the actual impact as many suppliers restart their
DISRUPTIONS: The war in Ukraine, China’s lockdown measures, rising interest rates and inflation have thrown a wrench into business plans made years in advance Samsung Electronics Co is talking with foundry clients about charging as much as 20 percent more for making semiconductors this year, joining an industry-wide push to hike prices to cover rising costs of materials and logistics. Contract-based chip prices are likely to rise around 15 percent to 20 percent, depending upon the level of sophistication, people familiar with the matter said. Chips produced on legacy nodes would face bigger price hikes, while new pricing would be applied from the second half of this year, they said, adding that Samsung has finished negotiating with some clients and is in discussions with others. Samsung’s decision
material SHORTAGE: Even as workers are about to return, Quanta lacks operating supplies, while Pegatron reported its lowest revenues in 11 quarters, the companies said Taiwan’s major Apple Inc supplier cut its outlook for the second quarter, joining a growing list of manufacturers warning about the fallout from lockdowns aimed at containing China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years. Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), which assembles MacBooks, expects a 20 percent quarterly fall in notebook shipments and a squeeze on margins this quarter due to the lockdown, a company representative said on Friday during an earnings call. The impact from supply chain disruptions could last until the end of the year, she said. The company’s Shanghai factory has been operating under tight restrictions since the middle of last month,