If You Owned a PC With a DVD Drive You Might Be Able To Claim $10 (theverge.com)

If you owned a PC with a DVD drive more than 10 years ago, you're probably owed $10. From a report on The Verge: A class-action lawsuit is now accepting claims after Sony, NEC, Panasonic, and Hitachi-LG were accused of inflating the prices of optical drives sold to PC makers like Dell and HP. If you bought a PC with a DVD drive between April 1st 2003 and December 31st 2008, you'll be able to claim $10 for each drive as part of the class-action lawsuit. It appears you don't need to provide any proof of purchase -- the settlement administrators are simply collecting names, email addresses, and the number of drives owned at the moment. You'll need to submit a claim before July 1st, and the money won't be released until other defendants in the litigation have settled.

Comments

Re:Does the lawyer's cut depend on this?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I don't know about that. I had forgotten all about the DRAM lawsuit against RAMBUS et al until a couple months ago when a $85 check for my portion of the settlement arrived in the mail. These things DO pay out.

Re:"Up to $10"

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If the lawyer fees are capped at a certain percentage of the money actually distributed, then there will be an incentive for the lawyers to actually make some effort to find the beneficiaries and get them some cash. As it stands now, the lawyers get a percentage of "estimated" compensation, deduct all their expenses and make a few news paper ads and go home. The money not distributed goes back to the defendant. So they don't have any incentive to actually distribute cash.