A PYMNTS Company

Multinational: Motorola defeated in LCD face-off

By  |  January 26, 2014

A US district judge dealt a major blow to Google-owned mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility, ruling against the company and its efforts to sue rivals for an alleged price-fixing conspiracy.

Motorola filed a lawsuit against Japan’s Sharp Corp., South Korea’s Samsung and other makers of LCD screens arguing the companies hiked product prices that were eventually sold in Motorola devices.

Those devices, however, we bought both in and outside the US. That fact lead US District Judge Joan B. Gottschall to dismiss the majority of the case under grounds that “the transactions were overwhelmingly foreign in nature” and therefore not covered by US antitrust law.

US antitrust authorities pursued a record-breaking case against various makers of LCD screens in recent years, leading to more than $1 billion in fines to manufacturers including Samsung, Sharp, Hitachi, LG, AU Optronics and Toshiba.

Full Content: Bloomberg

Want more news? Subscribe to CPI’s free daily newsletter for more headlines and updates on antitrust developments around the world.