Panasonic sues CMC

MATSUSHITA HAS decided to take legal action against CMC Magnetics Corporation (CMC), a Taiwanese manufacturer of DVDs, for an alleged patent infringement. Naturally, the battle is in a US court - this time in California.

The company claims that ever since Q3 2004, it has been negotiating in good faith with CMC to license these particular patents. Furthermore, it argues that a licence covering Matsushita Electric's essential DVD patents was available to the CMC through a patent pool from the DVD6C consortia, since Q3 2003.

But CMC has gone on making the disks and supplying them through two US affiliates of CMC - Hotan Corporation and KHypermedia Corporation.

Obviously, Matsushita has finally tired of trying to extract licence money through negotiations and has called the lawyers in. The company didn't say what intermediate actions it was asking the court to make. µ

L'INQ
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