TeliaSonera and Altimo have agreed to combine their ownership interests by contributing their respective direct and indirect interests in Turkcell and Megafon, into a new company. The new company will be established in a western jurisdiction and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Together the companies hope to create an international operator, with over 90 million subscribers in Russia, Turkey and the CIS countries, and with well functioning corporate governance. The new company will focus on developing the operations of Turkcell and MegaFon as well as expanding into new emerging markets.

Once established, the new company will own a majority of the shares in both Turkcell and Megafon. AF Telecom, the third major shareholder in Megafon, is also invited to join the partnership.

Meanwhile, TeliaSonera and Altimo have agreed to collaborate and align their efforts to resolve all ongoing legal disputes between each of them and Cukurova Group to make the establishment of the new company possible.

EMC, a player in information infrastructure solutions, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Kazeon Systems, an eDiscovery software provider for corporations, legal service providers, government entities and law firms.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.

EMC believes the acquisition with help the company to offer end-to-end, in-house eDiscovery and litigation readiness solutions as part of the EMC SourceOne family for integrated but modular eDiscovery, archiving and compliance.

Kazeon allows organisations to identify, preserve, collect, process, analyse and review information in accordance with the  EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model) framework. Core to Kazeon is its ability to handle Electronically Stored Information (ESI) that resides anywhere in the enterprise environment — including content on laptops, desktops, content management repositories (including, EMC Documentum), Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange, Lotus Domino, e-mail archives and file shares.

EMC also believes the acquisition will strengthen the company’s SourceOne portfolio. EMC SourceOne is an integrated family of products and solutions for eDiscovery, archiving and compliance.

A federal grand jury in San Francisco has returned an indictment against a former executive of a Taiwanese colour display tube (CDT) manufacturing company for participating in a global conspiracy to fix prices of CDTs, a type of cathode ray tube used in computer monitors and other specialised applications, the Department of Justice announced on 19 August.

The indictment, filed in the US District Court in San Francisco, charges Wen Jun (Tony) Cheng, a former Assistant Vice President of Sales and Marketing, with conspiring with unnamed co-conspirators to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing prices, reducing output, and allocating market shares of CDTs.

The Department alleges that Cheng participated in the conspiracy beginning at least as early as January 1999 until at least September 2004.

Cheng was previously indicted on 3 February 2009, for his participation in a global conspiracy to fix prices of Thin Film Transistor-Liquid Crystal Display (TFT-LCD) panels.

The indictment alleges, among other things, that Tony Cheng and co-conspirators carried out the CDT conspiracy by attending meetings and engaging in conversations and communications in Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, China and elsewhere to discuss and agree on the prices, output and market shares of CDTs. Cheng and co-conspirators are also alleged to have implemented an auditing system to verify that production lines had been shut down as agreed, and to have taken steps to conceal the conspiracy.

Cheng is charged with violating the Sherman Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $1m for individuals for violations occurring after 22 June 2004. The maximum fines may be increased to twice the gain derived from the crime or twice the loss suffered by the victims if either or those amounts is greater than the Sherman Act maximum fines.

This case is part of an ongoing joint investigation by the San Francisco Office of the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Francisco.

Austriamicrosystems, a designer and manufacturer of analog ICs for communications, industrial, medical and automotive applications, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit regarding magnetic encoder products against Melexis (Belgium) and its German subsidiary Melexis GmbH, at the District Court (Landgericht) in Duesseldorf, Germany.

In its complaint Austriamicrosystems asserts that the sale and distribution of products from Melexis’ product family of magnetic encoders in Germany infringes European Patent EP 0 916 074 B1.

The complaint seeks unspecified damages and a court ordered injunction against future infringement by Melexis.

BCD Semiconductor Manufacturing (BCD Semi), an analog integrated device manufacturer specialising in the design, manufacture, and sale of power management integrated circuits, has settled its patent litigation lawsuit with Power Integrations.

BCD has maintained that it did not infringe any patents, and is aware that many of the patent claims in the lawsuit are currently under a final rejection in re-examination proceedings ongoing in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The company has agreed to settle these patent claims for business reasons.

The consent judgment states that BCD Semi voluntarily accepts patent settlement, makes no payment to Power Integrations, and agrees not to sell the AP3700, AP3710 or hybrid Integrated Circuits with the same frequency dithering circuits in the United States. In addition, BCD Semi has agreed not to sell such products for end use in the US market.