Throughout 2006, Samsung was under heavy investigation and has recently agreed to pay $90 million USD for participating in illegal DRAM price-fixing practices. The fine is will be divided into: $80 million to be returned back to those affected by the schemes and the rest to be distributed among local and state government bodies. Such a fine isn't new to Samsung, as in 2005 the hardware company was ordered by the U.S. Department of Justice to pay roughly $300 million USD. Samsung is one of many major DRAM companies involved in bitter court ordeals regarding business conspiracies that caused major OEMs to pay higher prices for memory and in turn affecting prices for the consumer.
Samsung was originally excluded from the list of manufacturers that faced lawsuits: Elpida Memory (Japan), Hynix Semiconductor (South Korea), Infineon Technologies AG (Germany), Micron Technology (USA), Mosel Vitelic (Taiwan), Nanya Technology Corp. (Taiwan) and NEC Electronics America (USA). Most of these companies also faced Rambus in court, a company which provided much of the key evidence against the DRAM manufacturers in terms of patent infringement. The U.S. government fined a total of $731 million USD in 2006 for DRAM price-fixing.
News source: DailyTech
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