Price fixing isn't ever fun -- unless you're the company doing it and expect to get away with it, and then it's like a total blast, dude. But hopefully that isn't actually the case with Sharp and Hitachi, whose offices were apparently raided by the Japanese Fair Trade Commission on suspicion of fixing display prices for the DS; Nintendo's throw its hands up in the air exclaiming that it was unaware of the supposed screen cartel, and something else about just when they thought were out, they got pulled back in.

Update: A spokesperson for Nintendo of America commented that "The Fair Trade Commission in Japan conducted on the spot investigations with Sharp and Hitachi Displays in Japan with the suspicion that these two companies formed a cartel regarding the prices of LCDs that they sold to Nintendo. At this point in time, Nintendo is not in a position to make any comments on this, except to confirm that Nintendo itself is not being investigated by the FTC."

Those price fixing allegations that AMD and NVIDIA were facing late last year may have vanished from the forefront of your memory, but you can rest assured that the legal teams connected to the two are still workin' overtime to clean things up. Apparently, NVIDIA has been slapped with as many as 51 civil complaints over "price fixing and anti-competitive agreements, among other things," and on its March 16th filing with the SEC, the firm states that "42 civil complaints as of March 14 were filed against it on the same allegations." Notably, the outfit did state that the "lawsuits are putative class-actions," and unsurprisingly felt that they were all lacking merit and would be fought vigorously. Tsk, Tsk.

[Via Gearlog]

Seems we can't have a month go by without another industry-wide price fixing scandal. Today's cartel was bent on fixing the prices of professional-grade video tapes used in television. An infamous list of swindles which includes DRAM, LCDs, and online-music just to name a few. While the EU regulators citied "several companies," only Sony would confirm that they were charged with the crime. Fingers are also wagging in the direction of Panasonic, Fujifilm, Hitachi Maxell and TDK but all declined to comment on the matter. So innocent until proven guilty, mkay. The EU's charges are based on raids it made in 2002 as well as information received since, under a leniency program. Companies now have two months to respond. If guilty, companies could be fined as much as 10% of their annual global sales. Oh my.

If you (or Samsung) thought this whole "DRAM price-fixing disaster" was finished, apparently that's just not the case anymore, as it looks like the semiconductor giant will be coughing up an additional $90 million "to settle litigation brought by 41 US states pertaining to Samsung's alleged participation in a global DRAM price-fixing conspiracy." Yes, the company has already been hit with a $300 million fine and watched a trio of its own execs hit the big house, but this $90 million is supposed to "benefit victims that paid artificially high prices for personal computers and other high-tech equipment that contained the chips." Additionally, it was stated that $10 million was reserved for the states and localities to "recover their losses," while the other chunk would be split amongst the throngs of "consumers and other victims." No other details about the payout were mentioned, and while it wasn't stated for certain, we can assume that this final penalty will indeed be the last, but all this grief that Samsung has received most likely has all those other potential price fixers squirming.

Things weren't looking so great already for those skeezy SRAM price-fixers, but now it looks like they'll have a class action lawsuit to worry about on top of all that DOJ heat they're currently facing. A certain Kenneth Bagwell of Michigan started up the class action suit, claiming the defendants conspired to "fix, maintain or stabilize prices and to allocate markets for the sale of SRAM." And Kenneth isn't screwing around. He's managed to name just about every SRAM manufacturer under the sun as in cahoots: Alliance, Cypress, Etron, GSI, Hitachi, Hynix, Integrated Silicon Solution, Micron, Crucial, Mitsubishi, NEC, Renesas, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Winbond, Fujitsu, IBM, Seiko Epson, Epson, Sharp and ST Microelectronics are all named as defendants of his own personal cash-in on this debacle. Mr. Bagwell already brought his suit to a Michigan district court, so now we just watch and wait for it all to hit the fan -- as if it hadn't already.