Panasonic pleads guilty to laptop battery pack price fixing

Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have agreed to plead guilty to price fixing conspiracies involving laptop battery cells and automotive parts. They will pay a total of $56.5 million in criminal fines, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said.

Sanyo agreed to pay $10.7 million for the battery cells conspiracy and Panasonic will pay $45.8 million for its role in the automotive parts conspiracy, the DoJ said in a news release on Thursday.
LG Chem, a manufacturer of rechargeable batteries, has also agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $1.056 million criminal fine for price fixing involving battery cells, the DoJ said. Sanyo and LG Chem were involved in a battery cell conspiracy from about April 2007 until about September 2008, it said.

"The guilty pleas against Sanyo and LG Chem are the first in the department's ongoing investigation into anticompetitive conduct in the cylindrical lithium-ion battery cell industry," it said. Both companies conspired to fix the prices of battery cells sold worldwide for use in notebook computer battery packs, it added.
Lithium ion batteries are rechargeable and are often used in groups in more powerful battery packs for electronic devices. While flat, or prismatic, cells are more common in cellphones or thin-and-light laptops, cylindrical cells are used to make up most removable laptop battery packs.

Sanyo, LG Chem and their co-conspirators agreed during meetings and conversations to price the battery packs to customers at predetermined levels and to issue price quotations to customers in accordance with those agreements, according to the charges. "Sanyo, LG Chem and their co-conspirators collected and exchanged information for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing adherence to the agreed-upon prices and took steps to conceal the conspiracy," the DoJ said.

"Pleading guilty and cooperating with the division's ongoing investigations is a necessary step in changing a corporate culture that turned customers into price-fixing victims," the DoJ added.

'The Butler' Battle: Director Lee Daniels Pleads His Case To Warner Bros.' Kevin Tsujihara

Further ratcheting up the Weinstein Company’s campaign to force Warner Bros. into granting it permission to call its upcoming Lee Daniels’ film The Butler, the director has sent a letter to Warner Bros. Entertainment’s new CEO Kevin Tsujihara in which Daniels argues that if TWC has to change the movie’s title “it will most certainly hurt the film.”

On Tuesday following an arbitration, the MPAA’s Title Registry Bureau ruled that TWC could not use the title because it’s also the name of a pre-existing 1916 short film that now resides in the Warner Bros. library.

In response, attorney David Boies, who is representing TWC in the dispute, fired off letters to the MPAA and Warners earlier Wednesday threatening litigation.

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Daniels’ letter takes a different tack, pleading his case by describing the film, which stars Forest Whitaker and is based on the true story of Eugene Allen, who spent 34 years working at the White House until he retired as head butler, as a film he made “so I could show my kids, my family and my country some of the injustices and victories African-Americans and their families have experienced in the fight for Civil Rights.” The movie, he continued, “tells the story of the Civil Rights Movement from the sit-ins and the Freedom Riders, to Selma, Martin Luther King’s assassination and the election of the first Black president.”

Daniels wrote that while working on the film “is the proudest moment of my professional career, I am heartbroken as I write this letter.” He explained that the modestly budgeted movie is not intended to be a blockbuster and “if we were to change the title a mere six weeks before we open, it would most certainly hurt the film by limiting the number of people who would ultimately see this important story.”

Offering to screen the movie for Tsujihara, Daniels said, “I truly believe that once you watch it, you would not want to cause this film any harm.”

Daniels concluded the letter by adding he has the support of its stars Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and David Oyelowo as well as screenwriter Danny Strong. Copies also were sent to Warners executives Sue Kroll, Greg Silverman and Dan Fellman.