Lawsuit: Vizio sues Funai for “unfair competition” violations
February 14, 2009 by Derek
Funai recently grabbed the reins from Philips in the US and they’re running their TV and entertainment division, and now they have something rather unpleasant to deal with: Vizio is suing them.
According to reports on several sites, they have filed an antitrust and unfair competition lawsuit against Funai. Among the allegations: Funai (quoting the lawsuit): “acting alone and in concert with others, unlawfully restrained trade and monopolized the market for the licensing of technology used to interpret and retrieve information from a digital television broadcast signal, as well as the market for digital television sets and receivers.”
Vizio is angry that Funai inappropriately grabbed the rights to a US patent regarding the online manipulation of TV info, and since then it has (again quoting them) “unfairly discriminated against VIZIO in the licensing and enforcement” of this patent to the “detriment of trade and commerce.”
No doubt this will probably be settled with cash changing hands, but its curious that Vizio, once a small upstart HDTV company, is now throwing their weight around in the legal arena like this. We’ll keep an eye on how this shakes out.
This is quite funny. Maybe what goes around comes around huh vizio? You get whats coming to you for back dooring all of your customers with cheap products that break just after the waranty ends. Well heres to you buddy. I hope you get what you deserve. I really would love to file a civil act law suit against you but I know it would just be a waste of time.