Ever Owned a DVD Drive? You Might Be Owed $10

If you owned a computer with a DVD drive or a stand-alone DVD drive back in the day, you might be owed up to $10 per drive.

Eligible folks have until July 1 to submit a claim for their money, which you can do online.

This opportunity is courtesy of a recently settled class-action lawsuit against drive manufacturers Sony, NEC, Panasonic and Hitachi-LG. The lawsuit had dragged on for more than seven years, CNET reports:

The companies were accused of colluding to inflate the prices of optical drives sold to big computer companies and retailers.

When HP and Dell placed orders for lots of optical discs, the lawsuit alleged, competing drive makers would share their bids with each other to keep prices high. When the U.S. Department of Justice investigated the issue, at least one Hitachi-LG executive was sentenced to serve six months in prison after pleading guilty to the conspiracy.

For the purpose of this lawsuit, “optical disc drive,” or “ODD,” refers to a DVD-RW drive, a DVD-ROM drive or a combination drive.

According to a website set up for the lawsuit, you are eligible for a piece of the settlement if:

1. You purchased a new computer with an internal ODD, a stand-alone ODD designed for internal use in a computer, or an ODD designed to be attached externally to a computer for your own use and not for resale;
2. You made this purchase while a resident of Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wisconsin; and
3. You made this purchase between April 1, 2003, and December 31, 2008.

Note that Panasonic-branded computers are ineligible because they “are not part of the litigation or any of the settlements,” according to the lawsuit website.

Are you affected by this case? Let us know below or on our Facebook page.