Taiwanese Companies Colluding on 'LCD Panels'... Court Orders 32.8 Billion KRW Compensation to LG Electronics

Court: "Unfairly restricting competition through collusion... Korean courts have jurisdiction"

A court ruling has ordered Taiwanese manufacturers who sold LCD (liquid crystal display) panels at inflated prices through collusion to compensate LG Electronics, their client, with hundreds of billions of won.

According to the legal community on the 27th, the Seoul Central District Court Civil Division 21 (Presiding Judge Kim Ji-hye) recently ruled partially in favor of the plaintiffs in a damages lawsuit filed by LG Electronics and six overseas subsidiaries against Taiwan's AU Optronics and Hanstar Display.

The court ordered AU Optronics to pay a total of approximately 29.1 billion won and Hanstar Display to pay about 3.79 billion won to LG Electronics and its overseas subsidiaries.

The court judged that "(these companies) violated the Fair Trade Act by unfairly restricting competition through joint actions such as holding multilateral meetings to discuss maintaining and raising prices of key TFT-LCD (thin-film transistor liquid crystal display) products, agreeing on minimum target prices, and exchanging shipment volumes."

Earlier, the Korea Fair Trade Commission issued corrective orders to these companies in December 2011 and imposed a total fine of 194 billion won. Subsequently, LG Electronics filed a damages lawsuit against five Taiwanese companies among them. During the lawsuit process, LG Electronics withdrew the suit against companies other than AU Optronics and Hanstar Display.

The companies argued that since their entities are Taiwanese corporations and the evidence is located in Taiwan, the trial should be conducted in their home country's courts.

However, the court ruled based on international judicial jurisdiction provisions that "since the disputed matters and the parties have substantial connections with the Republic of Korea, the Korean court has international jurisdiction over this case."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.