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Toshiba Sues Western Digital For $1 Billion in Damages (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tussle-continues dept.

Toshiba has raised the stakes in an embittered legal row with its joint venture partner, suing Western Digital for a $1bn in damages and hoping Japanese courts will quash the US firm's interference in the sale of its memory chip business. From a report: The litigation, filed Wednesday in Tokyo District Court, seeks to stop Western Digital from making ownership claims over the enterprise that Toshiba is trying to sell. The Japanese company said in a statement that Western Digital's employees improperly obtained proprietary information. The relationship between Toshiba and Western Digital has gotten more acrimonious, as Toshiba moves toward a sale of the flash-memory division. Last month, Western Digital invoked an arbitration clause in their business agreement, seeking to block Toshiba's transfer of ownership of the unit to a separate legal entity in preparation for a sale. Toshiba, which has since reversed that transfer, then had its lawyers send a letter demanding that the U.S. company stop its "harassment" as Toshiba tries to sell the business.

8 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Fuck Toshiba. by Type44Q · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Fuck Toshiba. Generally decent products over the years but they were never properly backhanded for selling that milling machine to the Soviets... who we've busted our asses protecting them from. Fuck 'em with a sharp stick.

    1. Re:Fuck Toshiba. by known_coward_69 · · Score: 4, Informative

      in the 80's they sold a milling machine to the USSR that allowed them to build quieter submarines. and they did it after signing a contract saying they would not sell the tech or machinery

    2. Re:Fuck Toshiba. by Type44Q · · Score: 2

      BTW, it was multiple milling machines; I stand corrected.

    3. Re:Fuck Toshiba. by kbonin · · Score: 2

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06...

    4. Re:Fuck Toshiba. by guestapoo · · Score: 2
      Also, according to Japanese source, there was no evidence that Soviet improved there subs using Toshiba machine:
      Japanese wikipedia

      Also, according to the magazine supervised by the US Department of Defense, the quietness of the Soviet submarines improved after 1979, which is before the export of machine tools. Richard Armitage , who was then Assistant Secretary of Defense at the time, in a letter addressed to the House of Representatives military chairman of the House of Representatives, the Soviet nuclear submarine was equipped with a silent screw already three years before the incident, He said that he was opposed to sanctions against Toshiba. Furthermore, the quietness of submarines is not limited to the molding technology of screws but also to nuclear reactors and motor technology.

      Also it's coincided with the incidents in 80's, 90's, Japan rose as the most potential competitor to the U.S (which was predicted to be surpassed U.S in 90's), which called "Japan Bashing":

      During the 1980s, Japan Bashing reached a boiling point. Riding the late 1970s energy crisis, competition from Japanese car companies offering cheaper, fuel efficient cars became heated. Japan, however, was not interested in buying large American automobiles with steering wheels on the wrong side. The country was labeled as "protectionist", and protesters burned Japanese cars and flags, and the term "Japan Bashing" was coined.

  2. Language geek's perspective by Idou · · Score: 4, Informative

    This whole need to sell their chip division started with some catastrophically poor decisions by Toshiba's Westinghouse subsidiary. Now Toshiba ability to remain a going concern is at risk by Western Digital's attempt to block this sale.

    The Chinese character (kanji) for Toshiba's To is that for East.

    So, clearly, this is a case of "East meets West" with disastrous results. . . Kinda of sad, considering that Toshiba's humble beginnings go back to over century ago. . .

    --
    Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
    1. Re:Language geek's perspective by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 4, Informative

      Former CEO Hisao Tanaka making a 151.8 billion yen ($1.2 billion) "accounting error" also didn't help.

    2. Re:Language geek's perspective by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Kinda of sad, considering that Toshiba's humble beginnings go back to over century ago...

      Unfortunately it's decisions of strategy like this that typically sink all the major past multinational behemoths of the industrial world.