EU imposes a temporary ban on the import of PS3 into Europe



    The ban came into force due to LG's patent lawsuit filed against Sony. The judges of the Hague court decided to suspend the import of game consoles into Europe at the time of consideration of the statement of claim. The ban will be valid for at least 10 days from the date of entry into force of this ban. By the way, about a hundred thousand PS3 are imported weekly to Europe, and now all this number of game consoles will be arrested at customs. Most likely, the arrest will be valid for more than 10 days, since patent claims are usually considered by no means a week or two.

    LG filed a lawsuit against Sony, believing that the technology for playing Blu-ray discs, which is used in the game consoles of the corporation, violates several patents owned by LG. Currently, LG management is going to block the supply of consoles in other regions, not only in European countries. Analysts believe that the patent war between Sony and LG may drag on, and the plaintiff in this case may get problems in the United States, since Sony has the ability to block the supply of LG mobile devices to the US market.

    Experts believe that this court ruling could make the PS3 deficit, since the available consoles in the warehouse are hardly enough for a couple of weeks of sales. After this, the consoles can jump in price, and in most stores they simply disappear from the shelves.

    Sony representatives have so far refused to comment, because the corporation does not yet have enough information on this issue. Representatives of LG, who also remain silent regarding this lawsuit, do not contact. Sony suffers major losses due to blocking the supply of PS3 to Europe, and most likely, these losses will only increase if the matter is not settled within the next few days. And this is unlikely, as mentioned above, patent wars are not waged for a couple of days. Now the confiscated consignment is located in the customs warehouses of the Netherlands.

    At the moment, 3 million of these game consoles have already been sold, from the date sales began in March 2007.

    Via Guardian

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