Archive for: November 2008

Three major electronics manufacturers have agreed to plead guilty to a price-fixing conspiracy and pay $585 million in criminal fines for their roles in the pricing of LCD display panels, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

The Justice Department said LG Display Company, previously LG Philips, will pay by far the largest fine - $400 million, the second highest criminal fine ever imposed for price-fixing. The firm agreed to plead guilty to participating in a conspiracy from 2001 to 2006 to set the price of LCD panels worldwide.

Chunghwa will pay a $65 million fine for participating with LG and other unnamed co-conspirators during the five-year period.

Sharp agreed to pay a $120 million fine for three separate conspiracies with unnamed partners who sold LCD panels with artificially inflated prices to Dell for computer monitors and laptops, Motorola for panels in Razr mobile phones and Apple for panels used in iPod portable music players.

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Federal District Judge Kenneth Karas has ordered that Mark Papermaster “immediately cease his employment with Apple Inc until further order of this court.” IBM had sought the injunction citing an agreement with Papermaster in which he would not work with any competitor for a year after leaving the Armonk, N.Y.-based tech giant. IBM, filed a lawsuit against him last week, claiming that he broke the terms of a noncompete contract with IBM in accepting a high-profile job with Apple. InformationWeek spotted Papermaster’s formal response Friday morning, in which he declares that the two companies are not competitors and that his experience at IBM is not the primary reason why Apple sought his services.

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