Samsung SDI, Matsushita Drop Plasma Display Panel Patent Suits
Tuesday 12/04/2007 3:39 AM ET - Dow Jones News
SEOUL (Dow Jones)--South Korea's Samsung SDI Co. (006400.SE) said Tuesday that the company and Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (6752.TO) dropped their series of lawsuits over plasma display panel technology that dates back to 2005. Both companies agreed to drop lawsuits against each other, a Samsung SDI spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires. But he declined to provide details of conditions for the settlement.
Matsushita officials couldn't be immediately reached to confirm.
Legal squabbles over patents are increasingly common among Japanese and Korean consumer electronics companies, which use similar technologies to make their products. PDPs are used in some large flat-screen TVs, for which demand is rising sharply.
Matsushita and Samsung, the world's two largest PDP makers by volume, accused each other of infringing PDP-related patents in lawsuits filed in U.S. courts in 2005.
-By Jeongjin Lim, Dow Jones Newswires; (822) 721 0584; jeongjin.lim@dowjones.com
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12-04-07 0339ET
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