UPDATE: On May 24, 2017, three additional defendants have agreed to settle this class action lawsuit, bringing the total settlement fund up to $180 million. Class Members now have until Oct. 30, 2017 to file a claim, which can be done online in just a few minutes.

A group of electronics companies have agreed to pay a total of $180 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accused them of engaging in a conspiracy to fix the prices of optical disk drives. These settlements affect indirect purchasers of optical disk drives.

Optical disk drives are devices that allow data to be read from and/or written to optical disks, such as DVDs, CDs and other computer software storage. Optical disk drives are included in a variety of consumer electronic devices, including desktop and laptop computers.

This optical disk drive antitrust class action lawsuit includes a number of consolidated cases that were filed against electronic companies after the U.S. Department of Justice announced in 2009 that it was conducting a criminal investigation into the optical disk drive industry. The optical disk drive class action lawsuits were consolidated in 2010.

On July 21, 2016, a California federal judge approved $124.5 million worth of settlements in the case with Sony, Hitachi-LG Data Storage, Panasonic Corp., and NEC Corp. In March 2017, PLDS, Pioneer and TEAC agreed to pay an additional $55.5 million to resolve the price-fixing claims against them, bringing the total settlement to $180 million.







Consumers covered by the optical disk drive settlements include consumers in 23 states and the District of Columbia who bought optical disk drives from April 2003 to December 2008.

Several named defendants remain in this class action lawsuit including: BenQ Corporation, BenQ America Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Toshiba Corp., Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology Corp., Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology Corp. Korea, and Quanta Storage Inc. A trial date of Feb. 12, 2018 has been set for these remaining electronics companies.

Class Members who want to opt out of the settlement or ask to be excluded from its terms, must do so by July 14, 2017.