A number of TFT LCD manufacturers are under investigation by government regulators in Asia and the US for possible price-fixing. LG.Philips was subpoenaed by American, Japanese and Korean authorities on Monday, while Samsung was hit with legal papers on Tuesday. Further, Sharp was "contacted" by the Japan Fair Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice, though it's unclear if that meant it got a subpoena too. But the fun doesn't stop there, reports IDG News Service, with the European Commission now getting in on the act, too -- the EC said that it was trying to "ascertain whether there is evidence of a cartel agreement and related practices concerning price fixing." Of course, this comes hot on the heels of that video card investigation we heard about recently, as well as the RAM price-fixing fiasco that Mitsubishi (and previously Samsung) were involved in. We'll keep you posted if other display makers get swept up into this.

[Via Slashdot]

You can color us ignorant here, but we sort of figured that after all those regulatory hoops AMD jumped through in the process of getting approval for its ATI acquisition, the DOJ would've wrapped up any antitrust reservations it might have before the $5.4 billion deal went down. But for whatever reason, the Justice Department picked late Thursday to slap AMD with a federal subpoena regarding an investigation into possible antitrust violations in the graphics card biz. As if this wasn't weird enough, we just got word that NVIDIA has been slapped with a similar subpoena, with just as little explanation as to why. Shares are down for each company, both of which hold about 25 percent of the graphics card market, with Intel managing the rest. Intel apparently hasn't received a subpoena yet, but a spokesman said he was checking with the company lawyers just to make sure. According to analyst Nicholas Aberle, "It's a bit of a headscratcher. I don't know exactly what the angle is from the DOJ." We're just as much in the dark, but we'll definitely be keeping an eye on the situation.

Read - AMD Receives Federal Subpoena
Read - AMD, NVIDIA hit by graphics chip probe