Dell is accusing five Japanese and Taiwanese companies of price-fixing on LCD panels. The computer maker filed suit Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against Sharp, Hitachi, Toshiba, Seiko Epson, and HannStar.
In its 61-page complaint, Dell said it filed suit “on behalf of itself and its affiliates to recover for antitrust and other harms arising from billions of dollars of purchases at artificially inflated prices, over several years, of thin-film transistor liquid-crystal display panels, or products containing TFT-LCD panels.”
Dell alleges the companies formed a cartel to artificially inflate the prices on components Dell has been purchasing from them since 1996. Dell claims it has suffered, but didn’t specify damages.
None of the companies named in the suit has issued an official comment. However, some of the brands have been down this road before. Sharp agreed to pay a $120 million fine for price-fixing in April 2001 and December 2006, the Dell lawsuit says. Hitachi also agreed to pay $31 million for the same offense.
Dell’s Business Sense
Considering that Dell purchased billions of dollars worth of LCD screens over the past five years as LCDs became the display of choice for most desktop and virtually all laptop computers, it makes sense for the company to attempt to recover the money it thinks it was overcharged, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
Since the U.S. government has already pursued and received fines from two of the companies, King isn’t surprised that Dell is pursuing legal action — and he said other vendors could soon line up to recover the financial damages they claim to have suffered at the hands of the cartel.
“If you look at past suits where an admission of guilt has resulted in injuries to third parties, it does create a dynamic that leads to additional suits,” King…