Four Japanese record companies, including Sony Music Japan and Universal Music Japan, have gone to the courts to try and overturn a ruling by the country's Fair Trade Commission that said they had violated Japanese Antimonopoly Law by acting to prevent other companies from entering the so called master-ringtone business. The FTC made the claims because the four labels have exclusivity deals with a ringtone aggregator called Label Mobile in which they all have an equity stake.
Ahead of its legal appeal to the FTC ruling, Sony Japan told reporters: "We have not been in conspiracy with the three other labels to block chaku-uta [master ringtone] service firms' [market] entry but have made our own decisions to reject the chaku-uta service firms' requests. We hope that our assertion that there was no such conspiracy will be proved through the court procedures".