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US Justice Dept. Confirms Optical Disk Drive Probe

By Brent Kendall, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Tuesday that it is investigating possible antitrust violations in the optical disk drive industry.

The department's acknowledgment of the probe comes after Japanese technology giants Hitachi Ltd. (HIT, 6501.TO), Toshiba Corp. (TOSYY, 6502.TO) and Sony Corp. (SNE, 6758.TO) revealed this week that they have received subpoenas from Justice Department investigators.

All three companies said they would cooperate fully in the investigation, although they declined to disclose details of the subpoenas.

According to a person familiar with the investigation, the Justice Department started a criminal antitrust probe into the market for optical disk drives in recent months, investigating disk-drive makers for possible price-fixing, bid- rigging and allocation of markets. As well as featuring in personal computers, optical disk drives are used in everyday consumer products like DVD and Blu-ray disk players.

-By Brent Kendall, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9222; brent.kendall@ dowjones.com

  (END) Dow Jones Newswires
  10-27-091120ET
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