Sony sues Apex for DVD patent infringement...

April 11, 2002

More DVD news today: on Yahoo we can read that Sony has filed a lawsuit against Apex Digital Inc. for infringements of DVD player patents.

They claim that Apex imports and sells cheap DVD players into the US without paying the required licensing fees to Sony.

Sony holds a joint DVD technology license with Philips Electronics Ltd. ( X.PHE) and Japan 's Pioneer Corp. (PIO or 6773), and has been asking Apex and other small sellers of DVD players to pay 3.5% of the wholesale price or a minimum of $5 per player.

"This is clearly an infringement of our patent rights," said Yoshikazu Ochiai, a spokesman at Sony.

"We have been trying to get Apex to agree to pay the fees for the last year or so, but we came to the conclusion in late March that our talks would not bear fruit."

Ochiai said Sony is still open to a private resolution of the matter and will withdraw the case if Apex agrees to pay the licensing fees.

At the beginning of this month Apex posted on its Web site that it had agreed to sign a licensing agreement with Sony, Pioneer and Philips. But spokesmans of these companies don't know this yet