CDR Sam

Ritek, Prodisc and CMC still waiting to pay royalities to Phillips

April 23, 2008 | Random Blackouts

Not sure if anyone noticed but Ritek, Prodisc and CMC (the big three of disc manufacturers in Taiwan) have not been paying Phillips royalties.  It's been in the news lately; http://www.cdrlabs.com/news/byte/5720 Digitimes.com also had an article about this.  There has been a lot of media coming into the U.S. from these companies at lower then normal pricing based on the royalty fee. It's not that other brands are charging more it's they are paying the royalty.  There was a new program called "Veeza" that was reducing the amount from .03 cents US to  .025 US Half a cent difference to get the three manufacturers to comply with licensing.  They have have various reasons for not complying.   Technically the media from these three companies is in violation in the U.S. and Europe at this point until this is settled.   We have been staying away from it for that reason.  I can remember several resellers being fined very heavily for selling un-licensed media before.  That was a few years back now.  Recently Phillips has become more serious about enforcing the fees.

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