According to a Reuters report, PC maker Dell Friday filed a lawsuit in US District Court in San Francisco, accusing five Asian LCD makers - Hitachi, Toshiba, Sharp, Epson, and HannStar – of illegally colluding for price-fixing of products.

Though damages that Dell is seeking are yet to be ascertained, the company’s Dell spokesman David Frink said: “We're seeking to recover money collected for LCD panels that were purchased at artificially inflated prices; set through what we believe was an unlawful collaboration.”

The lawsuit filed by Dell makes the company the most recent bigwig LCD-panel buyer to accuse the industry’s leading suppliers of price-fixing. Earlier, AT&T – which buys LCD panels for its cell phones – had, in October last year, accused LG, Samsung, and AU Optronics of price fixing; while Nokia had filed a similar lawsuit in December.

In fact, a number of LCD vendors have already pleaded guilty - in an inquiry by the US Department of Justice - of having colluded for price fixing; and the fines for those admissions have crossed over $860 million.

Meanwhile, vendors Hitachi and Sharp too had pleaded guilty early last year, when the two companies, along with LG and Chunghwa Picture Tubes had paid $585 million for scheming to fix the prices of LCD displays sold to Apple, Dell, Motorola, and other companies.