Pioneer Wins PDP Patent Suit Against Samsung SDI

Pioneer won on Wednesday a patent infringement lawsuit it filed against Samsung SDI over plasma display panel (PDP) technology.

In the case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in late 2006, Pioneer alleged that Samsung infringed on two of its PDP patents. In question were U.S. patent 5,128,489, which covers the production process of a chemical used in plasma display panels, and U.S. patent 5,640,068, which deals with a surface discharge plasma display.

The jury found that Samsung did infringe on the two patents and decided it should pay Pioneer US$6.1 million to compensate for lost profits as a result of infringement of the first patent and an additional $51.3 million in royalty payments for that infringement. The Japanese company was awarded an additional $2 million to cover royalties for infringement of the second patent, according to court filings.

"Pioneer will continue its basic stance of protecting its intellectual property rights," the company said in a brief statement.

No immediate comment was available from Samsung SDI.

Samsung SDI is the world's second largest manufacturer of plasma display panels, according to second quarter data from DisplaySearch. The company had a 31 percent share of the global market during the April to June period behind top-ranked Panasonic, which had a 37 percent share. Pioneer was ranked in fifth place with a share of 3 percent behind LG Electronics and Hitachi.

The plasma display market overall is expanding with total shipments of 3.5 million screens during the second quarter on the back of strong demand for flat-panel televisions.

In the consumer space the company is paring back its plasma TV offerings and in Japan recently cut its line-up from four TV sets to two sets. Increasingly fierce competition in the flat panel TV market is squeezing profits at many set makers.



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Samsung Claims Thinnest LCD Crown With 7.9mm Screen

A tenth of a millimeter might not seem like much, but in the competitive world of flat-panel televisions it's enough for Samsung to steal the thinnest-TV crown from Philips.
At an event in South Korea last week Samsung unveiled a prototype 40-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) that is just 7.9 millimeters thin. That beats an 8mm-thin, 32-inch prototype Philips had on show at the IFA exhibition in Berlin in August.
Both prototypes gained some thinness by having the tuner and some other electronics separated into a box that's intended to sit alongside the screen. There's no word on when either might become a commercial product.
Samsung was also showing a prototype 52-inch LCD that is 9.9mm thin. That matches the thinness of Sony's ZX1, which is the thinnest LCD television yet to be announced as an actual product. While Sony is due to begin selling the ZX1 on Nov. 10 in Japan and soon after in Europe, Samsung doesn't have any details on when its set might hit the market.
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Regulators Would Reject Samsung Deal for SanDisk

Samsung's US$5.85 billion offer for flash memory chip developer SanDisk will probably be rejected by government regulators fearful such a tie up would harm competition, analysts said Tuesday.
With such an acquisition, Samsung would likely gain control of the majority of the global supply of NAND flash memory chips and could squelch potent rivals, said Jim Handy, memory chip analyst at researcher Objective Analysis.
Apple and other major buyers of NAND flash memory would likely find their price negotiating power "severely constrained" if Samsung and SanDisk combine, he added.
Cheng Ming-kai, chip analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, said a Samsung/SanDisk alliance would likely be viewed as uncompetitive by the U.S. Justice Department, based on measures the regulator uses to determine market competitiveness.
iPod and iPhone lovers could feel the brunt of any increase in NAND flash memory prices caused by the acquisition because the chips are at the heart of those devices as well as other digital music players and digital cameras, storing songs and other data.
For example, the 16G byte iPod Nano, at US$199, costs $50 more than the 8G byte Nano ($149), according to Apple's Web site, and the only difference between the two devices is the amount of NAND flash memory inside. Similarly, the 16G byte version of Apple's iPhone 3G costs $299 while the 8G byte version is $199, and the main difference is the amount of NAND flash memory.
Last year, Samsung and SanDisk together supplied nearly 50 percent of the world's NAND flash memory chips, Handy said, measured in either dollars or gigabytes.
"Objective Analysis is very doubtful that the government would allow such an acquisition to proceed, even in today's dire market," Handy said.
Samsung, already the world's largest producer of NAND flash memory chips, could also increase its production at the expense of SanDisk's current manufacturing partner, Toshiba.
Toshiba and SanDisk have co-invested in NAND flash production lines in Japan and share chip output for their products. It's unclear what would happen to Toshiba in a Samsung deal for SanDisk, but Handy speculates that the Japanese company may be pushed aside as Samsung produces all the chips needed for a combined Samsung/SanDisk on its own.
Toshiba representatives declined to immediately comment on Samsung's offer for SanDisk.
CLSA's Cheng said Toshiba will likely see how Samsung's offer for SanDisk unfolds before making any comments.
SanDisk has already rejected the offer as too low.
Samsung first approached SanDisk about a deal in May, and indicated it might be willing to pay a "significant premium to the SanDisk $28.75 per share closing price on May 22, 2008," SanDisk said in a statement.
The $26 per share offer Samsung made on Tuesday is lower than the May indication and 55 percent below SanDisk's 52-week stock market high. SanDisk shares ended regular trading Tuesday at US$15.04 on the NASDAQ, up 4.4 percent on talk of an offer from Samsung and a possible rival bid from Toshiba.
SanDisk shares soared after Samsung made its bid public, rising $7.89, or 52.5 percent, in after market trading to $22.93 per शेयर
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SanDisk Says No to Samsung Takeover Bid

SanDisk has rejected an unsolicited takeover bid from hardware maker Samsung Electronics, saying that it undervalues the Milpitas, California, maker of flash storage cards.
The two companies had been in takeover talks for about four months, but Samsung went public with its offer Tuesday, apparently after discussions had broken down.
"Our offer insulates your shareholders from the risk of market conditions that have severely deteriorated and are expected to remain challenging," Samsung Vice Chairman and CEO Yoon-Woo Lee wrote in a letter to SanDisk executives that Samsung released Tuesday.
SanDisk Chairman and CEO Eli Harari responded quickly, saying in a statement his company is willing to discuss a takeover, but that the US$26 per share offer "is opportunistically timed at the trough of an industry-wide downturn" and undervalues the flash card maker.
SanDisk's stock (SNDK), which had been trading in the $30 dollar range just four months ago, has dropped in recent months as a result of a global glut of flash memory chips. The stock closed Monday at $15.03, but was up more than 50 percent in after-hours trading after news of Samsung's offer broke.
SanDisk also suggested that the offer may be a "calculated negotiating ploy" aimed at gaining the upper hand in an ongoing patent-licensing dispute between the two companies.
The company's board of directors sent a letter to Samsung Monday stating that it had unanimously rejected the deal.
Samsung argues that a combination of the companies would create a powerful global brand and allow the resulting company to position Flash as the preferred technology for delivery and storage of content.
While Samsung said that SanDisk is a technology leader and has an innovative culture, it also argued that independently investing in the necessary facilities required to further technology innovation would be a significant tax on SanDisk's business.
Should the deal go through, Samsung would continue to operate SanDisk as a separate subsidiary and would not plan to lay off workers, it said।
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Samsung Eyes Possible Acquisition of SanDisk

Samsung is eyeing a possible acquisition of memory chip-maker SanDisk.
The company, which is the world's largest computer memory maker in the world, said it was "considering various opportunities" with regard to SanDisk "but nothing has been decided yet." The comment came after Korean online news service Edaily reported that Samsung had engaged JPMorgan Chase to advise on the acquisition of SanDisk.
In response, SanDisk issued a brief statement that, as is standard in such cases, didn't directly address the report in question.
"SanDisk periodically has conversations with multiple parties, including Samsung, regarding a variety of potential business opportunities. We evaluate all of these opportunities, but maintain a policy of not commenting on market rumors or speculation," it said.
SanDisk has seen its share price sink from just under $80 at the beginning of 2006 to $14 on Thursday. So far this year its share price and thus the value of the company has more than halved.
The acquisition buzz comes as the two companies are currently battling each other in court over the April 2006 termination of a patent licensing agreement. Samsung disputed the termination of the agreement and the two entered arbitration, which ended in May this year with a panel deciding the contract had been properly terminated. On July 24 Samsung petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to vacate the panel's final award. SanDisk said it intends to fight the Samsung petition.
SanDisk has close ties to Toshiba, a rival to Samsung, and the two jointly operate flash memory production factories through their Flash Alliance joint venture। They also closely cooperate on design and development of new memory chips so an acquisition by Samsung could mean big competitive changes in the memory chip market.
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