DVD-PC makers in US offer $10 to buyers for purchases between April 2003 and 31 December 2008
08 Feb 2017
A group of DVD drive manufactures have temporarily agreed to pay US citizens of some states $10 per DVD-ROM, DVD-RW or combination drive if they purchased the drive between April, 2003 and 31 December 2008.
The sum would be payable whether they purchased the drive as part of a PC or by itself. People who wished to be thus compensated need to visit the claim site and testify (under penalty of perjury) that they indeed purchased those drives within the given time period, and lived in one of the 23 states covered by the suit.
Though the optical drive market continued to decrease-''the physical disk format is somewhat obsolete in the era of content streaming,'' IDC wrote last year. This was not the case 14 years ago, when nearly all software was distributed via DVD-ROM.
Though the settlement site is not asking for proof of purchase yet, but it reserved the right to do so.
A group of 23 plaintiffs sued almost all DVD drive manufacturer, alleging that they collectively conspired to keep drive prices higher than they normally would be, in violation of antitrust laws.
Though the defendants denied having done anything wrong, several including Hitachi-LG, Panasonic, NEC, and Sony settled and agreed to pay a collective total of $124.5 million into four separate settlement funds.
CNET reported that there was an investigation by the US Department of Justice that led to at least one Hitachi-LG executive receiving a six-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to the conspiracy.
Hitachi-LG, Panasonic, NEC, and Sony settled the class-action lawsuit in December.
The Settlement Administrator has the right to request verification or more information regarding the claimed purchase(s) of Optical Disk Drive products to preven fraud.
It needs to be noted that though Panasonic drives are included in the settlement, it does not apply to Panasonic PCs. Also, only half of the country was eligible and one needed to have been resident in Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wisconsin at the time of purchase.
