SONY SUED FOR UNFAIR COMPETITION

In a landmark anti-trust suit, battery maker Tsum (Sichuan) Technology took Sony and its local partner to court in Shanghai, accusing the electronics company of unfairly engineering its products to not work with third-party batteries.

Tsum's litigators claimed that a digital key, part of Sony's InfoLITHIUM technology, was specifically designed to make Sony products nonfunctional when competitors' batteries were used. Tsum claims to have spent over Rmb1 million decoding the key and says it has had to pass these costs onto customers.