A Hitachi Ltd-LG Corp joint venture and Sony Corp were among a group of companies — including Taiwan’s Quanta Storage Inc (廣明) — yesterday fined a combined total of 116 million euros (US$131.6 million) by EU regulators for fixing the prices of CD and DVD drives.
Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc will have to pay 37.1 million euros, Sony received a 21 million euro penalty, while Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology Corp was fined 41.3 million euros, the European Commission said in a statement.
“Today’s [yesterday’s] decision demonstrates once again that cartelists cannot escape fines just by holding their meetings in cinemas and car parks outside Europe, while selling their products in Europe,” EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said.
The EU technology probe mirrored a US investigation where Hitachi-LG agreed to plead guilty and pay a US$21.1 million fine for conspiring with other companies from June 2004 through September 2009 to rig bids and fix prices for optical drives sold to Dell Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and Microsoft Corp.
The companies colluded between June 2004 and November 2008 to rig bids on optical disk drives sold to manufacturers of PCs and servers, the EU said.
Quanta Storage will have to pay 7.1 million euros, it said.
Sony Optiarc was fined 9.8 million euros, while Royal Philips NV received immunity from fines after blowing the whistle on the cartel, it added.
Separately, Sony has agreed to pay as much as US$8 million to settle claims from employees over the theft of their personal information in a computer hack linked to last year’s release of the movie The Interview.
Sony is to pay the current and former employees as much as US$4.5 million, with lawyers getting US$3.5 million, according to the settlement.
US officials have blamed North Korean hackers angered over the Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy for the attack, which was revealed in November last year.
The breach exposed Hollywood secrets, destroyed company data and caused the movie studio to initially cancel the release of The Interview, which was about a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
In the settlement, Sony will provide as much as US$2 million to reimburse employees who paid themselves for preventive identity-theft measures, according to a request for court approval filed on Monday in Los Angeles.
The company is also to pay as much as US$2.5 million to reimburse employees who have been affected by identity theft.
In addition, Sony is to provide identity protection services for employees who join the settlement.
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