Tag: legal
Sharp, LG and Chunghwa get fined $585 million for price-fixing
Wow. Wondered why your electronic devices cost so much? It’s because Sharp, LG and Chunghwa have been fixing the prices, but have no fear – they’ve just been hit with a $585 million fine for having done so. LG gets the biggest chunk – $400 million, Sharp are paying $120 for fixing the prices of iPod screens, RAZR screens and Dell laptop screens. Lastly, Chunghwa will pay a $65 million fine for participating with LG.
Only these three corporations have been charged, but Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the Justice Department in Washington, Thomas Barnett, has said that the investigation is still ongoing and they aren’t ruling out charges against individuals or against other companies. Tough talk. Still, hopefully it’ll see screen-based device prices go down over the next few years.
(via CNN Money)
Related posts: Microsoft hammered by EU anti-trust body again – handed record £680m fine | TorrentSpy tortured even after death – US court fines closed bittorrent site $110m
Apple's App Store triggers ANGER and RETRIBUTION – iPint and iBeer developers come to legal blows
The Carling iPint app is apparently little more than a shameless rip-off of Hottrix’s iBeer, according to the man who created iBeer – and is now suing the iPint makers for £7m.
Steve Sheraton, who came up with the original accelerometer-powered beer-drinking illusion app that we have been assured is VERY HILARIOUS after drinking three real beers, claims that representatives of brewing group Coors asked him if they could license his creation for use as an advertising tool. Steve declined, but the major corporation went ahead and created its iPint clone anyway…
SPORESUIT: EA sued over Spore DRM
The Spore DRM Wars rumble on. The latest development is that a class action suit has been filed in the Northern District of California court. It’s being brought on behalf of Melissa Thomas, and all other Spore purchasers. That includes me, actually…
Woman made example of – fined £16,000 for illegally downloading a game
Poor old Isabella Barwinska just wanted to have a bit of fun playing pinball on her PC with her friends, but she’s ended up with a £16k fine after being tracked down via the P2P network she used.
Isabella unwisely chose to nick a copy of Pinball Dreams 3D off the internet, no doubt attracted by its wide variety of tables and realistic arcade gameplay! But she was rumbled, and recently ordered to pay damages of £6,086.56 and costs…
Scrabulous removed from Facebook in North America, internet retaliates
“Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice,” reads a message from Scrabulous’ makers to players on Facebook. The removal of the Scrabulous application follows the lawsuit from Hasbro, the company which own the distribution rights to the Scrabble board game, which Scrabulous very closely resembles.
Scrabble vs. Scrabulous – the legal showdown begins
With depressing inevitability, we bring news that Hasbro Inc, owners of the distribution rights to popular board game Scrabble have sued the creators of Facebook’s seemingly shameless rip-off, Scrabulous.
Blizzard wins round one of World of Warcraft bot battle
A judge has ruled in favour of World of Warcraft developer, Blizzard, which is currently engaged in a legal battle against the creator of a WoW bot program called MMO Glider. The Arizona district court ruling on the case has supported Blizzard’s claim that the program infringes on its copyright, giving a first stage victory to the MMO maker.
Survey: DVD piracy on the rise in the UK
A new survey suggests that DVD piracy is on the increase in the UK. Armed with a wheelbarrow of scepticism, we bring you the results from an analysis conducted by Futuresource Consulting: 36% of Brits (who responded to the survey) have copied DVDs within the last six months compared to 25% last year. In that time, an average of 22 movies were copied, including 13 new releases, and a “significant portion” of people were copying from rental and borrowed DVDs.
Look out Scrabulous – EA and Hasbro to launch legit Facebook Scrabble in North America
This week, Electronic Arts and Hasbro announced plans to launch the first licensed Facebook Scrabble game in North America. The licensed version will become available in mid to late July and will be free and without adverts, at least for the start.
Virgin to file-sharers: We won't cut you off
Following a backlash to today’s news that Virgin Media has been sending out warning letters to 800 identified file-sharers, a company spokesman has stated that this is not a prelude to the ISP cutting off offenders’ internet connections.
