A row has blown up in Washington over the expected award of a $60m to $70m contract for optical disk systems to automate the storage and retrieval of the records of the Patent & Trademark Office of the Commerce Department to Sony Corp through the prime contractor on the project, Planning Research Corp of McLean, Virginia: systems from Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing, Cygnet Systems Inc and the Optimem arm of Cipher Data Products were bid by other contenders for the contract, and a group of senators is protesting that award of the business to Sony would set back the entire US optical disk industry; Planning Research says that the Sony system is simply better than the US systems.
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