The courts in Netherlands have declared their decision in a patent dispute filed by LG against Sony, ruling in the favor of the latter and releasing the confiscated shipments of their PS3s from the customs. The Korean electronics giants LG had last month won an order from the court which had led to the authorities of the country seizing all the shipments of the Sony gaming consoles that were being imported into Europe. This decision had led to a multitude of the PS3 units being confiscated by custom officials in the Netherlands, a country where the company imports approximately 100,000 units every week.
However, that order was today reversed by a court in the country. The ruling of the court reportedly orders that the 300,000 PS3s that have been confiscated be released for the retail markets of Europe and it also penalizes LG by a fine of $179,400 that the company will have to pay as court costs. However, this ruling isn’t the last to come according to Foss Patents, a patent blog, which reports that work is still ongoing for a full ruling on the matter.
The dispute of which these confiscations and subsequent release of the PS3s were the latest moves involves claims by LG that Sony violated four of its patents with the PS3. The patents involve matters such as the functioning of its Bluray technology with multiple data streams in use along with some methods it uses to reproduce data which is stored on read only devices. There are also some other patents that Sony has been accused of violating which involve the reception and processing of signals in their Bravia range of HDTVs. LG has demanded $150 to $180 per unit that it claims it lost out on because of the alleged patent infringement by Sony.
