On Friday, July 12, the EU’s General Court rejected appeals from five members of the optical disk drive cartel to have their collective fines of €116 million (US$130.7 million) annulled or reduced.
By a decision of October 21, 2015, the European Commission found that several undertakings had participated in a cartel on the optical disk drives (ODD) market, in breach of EU competition law. Those products are used inter alia in personal computers manufactured by Dell and Hewlett Packard (HP), which are the two most important original equipment manufacturers on the global market for PCs.
According to the Commission, the cartel at issue, which lasted between at least June 2004 and November 2008, sought to accommodate volumes on the market and ensure that the prices remained at levels higher than they would have been in the absence of the cartel.
|
Company |
Fine (€) |
|
Sony Corporation and Sony Electronics Inc. (jointly and severally liable) |
21,024,000 |
|
Sony Optiarc Inc. |
9,782,000 (of which Sony Optiarc Inc. was jointly and severally liable with Sony Optiarc America Inc. in an amount of 5,433,000) |
|
Quanta Storage Inc. |
7,146,000 |
|
Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc. and Hitachi-LG Data Storage Korea Inc. (jointly and severally liable) |
37,121,000 |
|
Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology Corp. and Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology Korea Corp. (jointly and severally liable) |
41,304,000 |
The General Court found that some of the ODDs covered by the cartel were
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